Detailed Report on
EDITORIALS dealing with the
Palestinian-Israeli
conflict
published in
Washington Post
between
October 6, 2000 and March
16, 2001
Palestine Media Watch
03/20/2001
1.
Introduction
The Washington Post published fourteen (14) editorials on the Middle East crisis between October 3, 2000 and March 16, 2001:
|
Date |
Editorial |
|
|
|
|
October 7, 2000 |
“The Clashes Continue” |
|
October 11, 2000 |
“No Peace, No Process” |
|
October 14, 2000 |
“Peace Partners” |
|
October 18, 2000 |
“Cease Fire?” |
|
October 20, 2000 |
“Mr. Arafat’s Silence” |
|
October 24, 2000 |
“Timeout From Peace” |
|
December 2, 2000 |
“New Elections in Israel” |
|
December 10, 2000 |
“Mr. Barak’s Gambit” |
|
December 11, 2000 |
“Shortchanging Democracy In Israel” |
|
December 23, 2000 |
“Middle East Replay” |
|
December 31, 2000 |
“Mr. Arafat’s Waffle |
|
January 7, 2001 |
“Israeli-Palestinian Endgame” |
|
February 5, 2001 |
“Awaiting an Israeli Leader” |
|
February 7, 2001 |
“Mr. Barak’s Defeat” |
|
February 18, 2001 |
“Mideast Powder Keg” |
This
report examines in detail the content of these editorials.
2.
The Editorial Board
The
members of The Washington Post’s editorial board are:
·
Fred
Hiatt – Editorial page editor
·
Colbert
I. King – Editorial page deputy editor
·
Ken
Ikenberry – Editorial page deputy editor
3. Detailed Analysis of WP Editorials
In
editorial after editorial, the WP rarely if ever deviated from the standard
Israeli account of the Mideast situation, reiterating the Israeli perspective
of how events occurred, the Israeli notion of who was to blame, and the Israeli
position on how to best resolve the conflict.
The
February 27, 2001 edition of The Village Voice reported that in a meeting with
Khalil Jahshan, vice president of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee,
Mr. Hiatt, editorial page editor at The Post, stated: "I don't think it's my job to match opposing political views
column for column, but I do think that we should try to have other points of
view represented on the page."
The
following is a detailed breakdown of exactly how WP editorials failed to
represent all points of view in the Mideast conflict, opting instead to deliver
twelve (12) of its fourteen (14) editorials during the time period examined by
this report in a distinctly pro-Israeli voice.
"Now it is being driven
chiefly by Yasser Arafat's failure to stop it" (10/7).
"...he inflexibly
rejected a deal at Camp David" (10/7).
"And the violence
serves as a crude reminder of the havoc Mr. Arafat can wreak in the absence of
an agreement" (10/7).
"...we are seeing a
tactical use of violence by a leader who has always retained for himself the
option of playing that card" (10/7).
"It is less clear than
ever that Yasser Arafat is a partner with whom Israel can reach an
understanding" (10/11).
"Mr. Arafat's walking
away from a deal at Camp David, his stoking of the recent violence and his
persistent refusal to call that violence off force Israel to begin
contemplating alternative futures, no matter how dismaying" (10/11).
"Mr. Arafat's failure
to protect Joseph's Tomb" (10/11).
"The Clinton
administration has been reluctant to acknowledge that one side is sabotaging
the process" (10/11).
"Since Israel and the Palestinian
movement began moving toward peace in 1993, Mr. Arafat has never made a
concerted effort to prepare his people for the compromises peace would require;
he has never spoken about peace as a goal or an aspiration, rather as a
grudging concession to be traded for land and independence" (10/20).
"Mr. Arafat's original
unwillingness to stand up for peace..."
(10/20)
"Mr. Arafat does not
want peace -- at least not a peace that falls short of his maximalist
demands" (10/20).
"...he remains an unchallenged
leader and a hero in the Arab world" (10/20).
"...their
[Palestinians'] chief victimizer would be their leader" (10/20).
"...it was Mr. Arafat's
own moves that forced Mr. Barak's hand [to declare a timeout from the peace
process]" (10/24).
"Palestinian leader
Yasser Arafat had not prepared Palestinian public opinion for the compromises
necessary to bring about a final status deal" (12/23).
"Mr. Arafat made no
compromises" (12/23).
"Mr. Arafat's
unwillingness to advocate publicly the principle of compromise raises doubts
about whether he accepts it himself"
(12/23).
"Once again, Yasser
Arafat is hesitating. Before him,
virtually for the taking, is an independent Palestinian state in the Gaza Strip
and 95 percent of the West Bank, with East Jerusalem as its capital, with sovereignty
over the surface of the Temple Mount and with the right of refugees to return
to Palestinian-controlled territory"
(12/31).
“Yasser Arafat had the
chance to make both long-term and interim deals with Mr. Barak, but he rejected
both, preferring the irrational gamble that violence and rejectionism would
gain him a better deal.” (2/18)
NOTES:
·
Not
a single mention of Israel's own failure to implement signed agreements, or its
refusal to honor U.N. resolutions.
·
All
the editorials blaming Arafat overlooked the opportunity to probe his
marginalization and the weakness of his grip on the crumbling situation from
the point of view of an increasing number of Palestinians.
·
Israel’s
actions are legitimized in several instances, with the argument being that Arafat
actually “forced” Barak to come down with brutal force on the Palestinians, and
“force[d] Israel to begin contemplating alternative futures, no matter how
dismaying.”
·
Broad,
sweeping statements are made of Arafat’s “unwillingness,” his “inflexibility,”
his “maximalist demands,” and his many “failures” with no effort at all to
clarify what the Palestinian demands actually are. Readers are expected to take the writer’s word that these demands
are unreasonable.
3.2. Arafat Amasses Worldwide Support/Sympathy By Encouraging
Violence
"He has used the deadly
riots to improve his international position, which has eroded since he
inflexibly rejected a deal at Camp David" (10/7).
"...we are seeing a
tactical use of violence by a leader who has always retained for himself the
option of playing that card" (10/7).
"...in Europe, the
Palestinians garner new sympathy" (10/7).
"Israeli Prime Minister
Ehud Barak was said yesterday to be meeting with advisors to consider a plan to
contain violence by essentially quarantining much of the Palestinian
population...This would be a dreadful outcome, impoverishing many
Palestinians. Most of the world all the
more would see the Palestinians as the victims..." (10/20)
NOTES:
·
The
last statement makes two glaring omissions: (1) that collective punishment is
illegal under the Geneva Convention; and (2) that closure practices (a form of
collective punishment) are routinely imposed by Israel on
Palestinian-controlled cities and villages, and have been imposed numerous times
since the start of this latest round of violence.
"…Israel's reasonable
negotiating position…" (10/7).
"We have supported the
Palestinian-Israeli peace process since its inception...But implicit in our
support has been the assumption, or at least the hope, that Israel had someone
to negotiate with” (10/11).
"[Clinton
administration's] chances of persuading the Palestinians to tamp down the
violence…"
(10/11).
"The
[peace] process has withstood violence before: Hamas bombings, massive riots
following the opening of an archaeological tunnel in Jerusalem's Old City
during the Likud government that preceded Mr. Barak's, the assassination of
Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin" (10/11).
"[The
Palestinians] will not renounce violence or negotiate in good faith" (10/11).
"Serious
Palestinian violations in the past few days gravely undermine their claim to
trustworthiness" (10/14).
"No
wonder Israelis are asking whether there is anyone on the other side they can
trust" (10/14).
"The
principal obstacle to peace, of course, resides in the Palestinian
leadership" (12/10).
"...[Barak’s]
courageous efforts to make peace..." (12/11).
“...strenuous peace efforts of Mr. Barak...assure him a deserved
victory" (12/11).
"But
if Mr. Arafat chooses not to make peace with Mr. Barak..." (12/11).
"The
rhetoric from the Palestinian side has not merely failed to acknowledge that
painful compromises are necessary, it has hardened notably in the weeks since
the violence broke out" (12/23).
“…the
peace process so persistently pursued by the Clinton administration – and so
courageously embraced by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak…” (1/7)
“To a
great extent he [Barak] sketched out the contours of a deal that could have
ended the conflict, had the Palestinian leadership been willing to do
business.” (2/7)
“Mr.
Barak may simply have revealed that the Palestinian vision of peace is one that
doesn’t accommodate Israel’s existence as a Jewish state.” (2/7)
“…against
the backdrop of continued violence and in the virtual absence of Palestinian
concessions.” (2/7)
“By
focusing on Mr. Sharon’s past, the Palestinian leaders attempt to blur the real
issue: that they were unwilling to do business with even Mr. Barak’s most
accommodating of Israeli governments.” (2/18)
NOTES:
·
Note the congratulatory tone consistently used to
describe Barak’s “courageous” concessions.
·
Note the accusatory tone towards Palestinians,
particularly the statement that the “principle obstacle to peace, of course,
lies with the Palestinian leadership.”
The myth is perpetuated that Palestinians are being made “generous”
offers, but that they are a stubborn lot who reject anything that comes their
way. No attempt is made to clarify
exactly what it is they want.
·
One editorial states that some of the obstacles in the
peace process have been “Hamas bombings” and “massive riots” by the
Palestinians, in addition to Rabin’s assassination. The impression is that the gravest obstacle to peace from the
Israeli side has been the assassination of a prime minister, rather than the continuing
illegal occupation of Palestinian land and ongoing land expropriation and
settlement practices on Palestinian territory.
·
The reference to “persuading the Palestinians to tamp
down the violence" fails to also
call on Israel to tone down its brutal, exaggerated response to the violence –
force that has been condemned by both the U.N. and countless human rights
organizations. Amnesty International
has even stated that Israel’s actions “constitute war crimes.”
·
Absolutely no mention is made of Israeli violations of
U.N. Security Council Resolutions 242 and 194, despite their obvious relevance
to the current crisis and the issues that caused the Intifada to start in the
first place – namely, the continuing illegal Israeli occupation and the plight
of millions of Palestinian refugees who were uprooted from their homeland
during the establishment of the Israeli state.
·
No mention is made of the fact that West Bank and Gaza
settlements have increased 50% since the signing of the Oslo Accords, a blatant
Israeli violation of that agreement that is consistently overlooked in favor of
pointing to Palestinian violations only.
·
No mention is made that even the most “generous” of
Barak’s proposals have offered to relocate no more than 20% of the existing
settlements in the West Bank.
·
Once
again, there is no attempt to clarify exactly what the Palestinians are being
offered and to explain why they may be rejecting Barak’s supposed “generosity.”
Readers are expected to take the writer’s word that these concessions are
indeed “generous” and that Palestinians’ rejection of them is unreasonable and
is the cause of all the failures of the peace process.
3.4 Toning Down Sharon’s Colorful History
"...he [Barak] will run
against a less popular figure, most likely the hard-line leader of the Likud
party, Ariel Sharon. Mr. Sharon, the architect of Israel's disastrous invasion
of Lebanon, is a hard sell to many Israelis" (12/10).
"...has been
responsible during his career for some of Israeli history's greatest
errors" (12/10).
"Ariel
Sharon -- Mr. Barak's right-wing opponent in the coming election..." (12/31).
“Ariel
Sharon, an architect of every hardline policy Israel has pursued against the
Palestinians in the last 30 years…” (1/7)
NOTES:
·
There is a clear attempt on the part of the writers to
avoid speaking in specifics of Sharon’s blood-stained record, his tainted
reputation even among Israelis, and the U.N. references to him as a genocidal
war criminal. There is scarcely a
mention of the death toll incurred by his invasion of Beirut and his command of
a massacre of Palestinian refugees on the way out of Lebanon.
·
There is no attempt to even touch on the subject of why
Sharon’s election to the Israeli premiership would be disastrous to the peace
process. Given all the ink spent on
scolding Arafat, this would not have been an irrelevant issue to address.
"...just
as Palestinian police failed to protect the Israeli soldiers who were murdered
in Ramallah on Thursday, they did not stop a mob from setting the synagogue [in
Jericho] aflame in response to the Israeli rocket attacks that followed the
Ramallah killings" (10/14).
"...there
is no talk of the Palestinian concessions that would be needed to reach a deal,
especially those dealing with the right of refugees who fled Israel during the
1948 war to return..." (12/23)
"...the
right would obliterate Israel as a Jewish state" (12/23).
“…his
[Arafat’s] continued insistence on a ‘right of return’ to Israel by 4 million
Palestinian refugees – a condition that…will never be part of a negotiated
peace settlement” (1/7).
NOTES:
·
The first statement has no factual basis. There is absolutely no stable ground on
which to claim that the Palestinian police stood by and allowed the Israelis to
be killed and the synagogue to be destroyed.
·
The second and third statements are in agreement, word
for word, with the standard Israeli argument for denying the right of return to
Palestinians only because they are not Jewish.
The editorials are also in consensus with the pro-Israeli notion that
allowing refugees their internationally-recognized right to repatriation would
be tantamount to demographic suicide for Israel. There is no attempt to present the Palestinian perspective on
this (i.e., that it is discriminatory).
·
The second statement propagates the Israeli version of
history: that the Palestinian exodus of 1948 was a self-imposed one, not at all
related to Israel’s militant occupation and exile activities. The notion that Israel was not at all responsible
for the Palestinian refugee situation has been strongly contested by countless
Israeli historians.
·
The last statement contains a glaring error: the total
number of Palestinian refugees all over the world is 4 million. The WP fails to mention that not all of
these people are from the territories now considered part of Israel, and that
not all – and not even a fraction – of the ones who are from there will even be
interested in returning to their original lands within Israel.
·
The editorials do not suggest an alternative to
repatriating the refugees; they simply state that they should not be allowed to
return.
3.6 Palestinians Should Take What They're
Offered and Run
"Whatever
points such a strategy scores Mr. Arafat in Europe aren't worth the price he'll
pay with those who will have to give him the land on which to build his
state" (10/7).
"The
deal [Oslo] rested on two premises: first, that Israel would be prepared to
relinquish its control over Palestinian land and lives...The deep compromises Israeli
Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered at the Camp David summit proved the first
assumption correct" (10/11).
"In the wake of his election
announcement, Mr. Barak proposed an interim deal that would allow the
Palestinians to declare a state. The
Palestinians quickly rejected any such arrangement, but Palestinian
independence remains on the table. It
won't stay there long if Mr. Arafat lacks the courage to compromise..." (12/2)
"If
Mr. Arafat does not reach an understanding with Mr. Barak before Israelis go to
the polls, the dream of an independent Palestine could be put off for
years" (12/3).
"Now
talks are again underway, amid reports of new Israel's flexibility on land and
Jerusalem, including the Temple Mount" (12/23).
"Barak's
government is contemplating compromises that would have been unthinkable a year
ago" (12/23).
"Moreover,
the deal will not get better for Palestinians with time. The more Jewish settlements in the occupied
territories grow, the less flexible Israel will be with the land...At some
point, the Palestinian position will have to accept the best deal it can get
and sell that deal to its people" (12/31).
"...remarkable
compromise on the part of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak" (12/31).
NOTES:
·
All the editorials implicitly – and some explicitly –
state that any land concessions made to the Palestinians will be a “donation”
of sorts made out of Israel’s goodwill and generosity. The fact is completely ignored that these
land “concessions” are actually illegally occupied territories to which Israel
has no legal claim whatsoever under international law. U.N. Resolution 242, which is curiously
missing from the editorials’ discussion of land concessions, demands that every
single Israeli settlement in the Gaza and West Bank be dismantled, and 100
percent of the land be returned to Palestinian control, not 90 or 95 percent.
·
The impression given by the editorials is that the only
way for the Palestinians to prove they are a “partner to peace” with the
Israelis is to capitulate to Israeli ultimatums.
Additionally, in one particular editorial, the writer
referred to negotiations between Israel and “the
Palestinian movement” when it was clear s/he was referring to the
Palestinian people: “Since Israel and the Palestinian movement
began moving toward peace in 1993…” (10/20). This terminology is derogatory to the Palestinians, whose
identity is reduced to a mere “movement,” while the Israelis are identified
with a nation, Israel.
4. Mentions
The
following tables summarize the number of times some key points and issues were
raised in the eleven editorials:
|
Description |
No. mentions |
|
|
|
|
U.N. Resolutions mentioned |
0 |
|
Human rights reports’ findings mentioned |
0 |
|
Palestinian failure to honor agreements mentioned |
2 |
|
Israeli failure to honor agreements mentioned |
0 |
|
Arafat blamed |
7 |
|
Barak blamed |
0 |
|
Arafat praised |
0 |
|
Barak praised |
4 |
|
Palestinian death toll is an order of magnitude larger than the Israeli toll mentioned |
0 |
|
Specific incident of Palestinian death mentioned |
0 |
|
Specific incident of Israeli death mentioned |
1 |
Noteworthy
is the total absence of any mention of the various U.N. Resolutions condemning
Israel’s use of military force against civilian populations. Equally noteworthy is the total absence of
any mention of reports issued by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International,
Peace Now, B’tselem, and others that squarely place the blame on Israeli forces
for using excessive military force on civilians, condemn the killing of
children, decry the economic blockade by Israel on the Palestinians, violence
against journalists, and strongly challenge the official Israeli line that was
unequivocally adopted by the WP’s editorial writers.
5.
Conclusions
Twelve
(12) of the fourteen (14) editorials published in The Washington Post between
October 3, 2000 and March 16, 2001, strongly reflected the official Israeli
position on the Mideast crisis. In what
they mentioned, how they mentioned it, and what they failed to mention, the
editorials remained faithful to the official Israeli position and presented
very little that was original on what the root causes of the crisis are, why
the violence has persisted, and what may be done to bring the conflict to an
end.
In
a significant majority of the editorials, the tone that was consistently adopted
was an accusatory one against the Palestinians, promoting an image of
Palestinian leadership that rejects every “generous” offer thrown its way. This claim was never once supported by any
objective evidence. There was also
never an attempt to present the Palestinian perspective, to provide some sort
of explanation for why Israel’s offers have been so objectionable to date. In contrast, there was an active attempt to
hide Israel’s role in helping to thwart the peace process (the most obvious of
which is its ongoing illegal settlement activities, which have accelerated
since Oslo).
The
WP’s editorials also completely ignored a wealth of facts, readily available,
from the U.N., independent journalists, and dozens of respected human rights
groups who have published detailed reactions to the crisis considering its
various social, political, economic, and humanitarian dimensions.
For
the WP to squarely blame Palestinians alone for all the disasters of the
Mideast peace process is indicative of unmistakable bias in its editorials.