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By Rob Harris

The Journal logo

Journal.ie, a relatively popular online Irish news website, published an article on the November 10^th by Michelle Hennessy, entitled “Explainer: What do the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks mean?”. The article was also carried on other websites, such as MSN and Yahoo UK and Ireland — thus yielding a significant amount of coverage.

The article is a run-down of the Israeli-Arab/Palestinian conflict as it presently stands, from the perspective of the two parties currently talking peace. Thus, it offers some Israeli viewpoints. However, as is so often the case with these broad media over-views of the conflict, it regurgitates quite a number of common mainstream media myths, which inevitably favour the Arab-Palestinian perspective.

Settlements and the peace-process

The article soon begins with the mention of seemingly substantive Arab-Palestinian compromises:

The Palestinians were demanding a publicly declared freeze to all Israeli settlement construction in the occupied territories as a condition to resume peace talks, with the last round of direct talks collapsing in 2010. With the settlements being one of the most contentious issues in the conflict, the Israelis rejected this…

However on 18 July, a Palestinian official said leaders would vote on a plan under which peace talks with Israel would not depend on a settlement ban.

Oddly there is no mention of the fact that Israel had to make painful prisoner concessions, to get the Palestinian Authority to even consider coming to the table, until the end of what is a relatively long article, thus presenting the PA as the most compromising party of the two. The article continues:

What are the main issues? Essentially, the Palestinians want an end to the Israeli occupation of territories and the establishment of an independent state with defined borders, though both sides disagreeing on where the border should be drawn.

Despite noting that the conflict covers a number of issues, the topic of settlements is returned to repeatedly, with less focus on major Israeli concerns. The article asserts a pointed inaccuracy:

The building of Israeli settlements in the West Bank has been described by many international nations as an obstacle to the peace process…

This has been happening since the 1990s with Israeli settlers taking over more land in the region as the years went on, creating tension between them and the Palestinians — particularly the farmers.

There have in fact been no recognised settlements established by Israel “since the 1990s”. The taking of land relates to unrecognised “Settler outposts”, which the Israeli authorities dismantle with some regularity.

The first direct talks were hosted by then US president Bill Clinton at Camp David in 2000. Palestinian president Yassar Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak both attended but the negotiations collapsed over issues of Jerusalem and Palestinian refugees. This also sparked a new Palestinian uprising, or intifada.

The article fails to mention that the Camp David talks fell apart due to Arafat’s rejection of shared sovereignty over the Temple Mount/Haram, whilst offering no counter proposal. Moreover, the Second Intifada was provoked as an attempted affront against the United States, as one Palestinian leader indicated in 2003:

Whoever thinks that the intifada broke out because of the despised Sharon’s visit to the Al-Aqsa Mosque, is wrong, even if this visit was the straw that broke the back of the Palestinian people. This intifada was planned in advance, ever since President Arafat’s return from the Camp David negotiations, where he turned the table upside down on President Clinton… [Arafat] rejected the American terms and he did it in the heart of the US.

The article continues, by placing blame on Israel for the collapse of the Olmert-Abbas peace talks:

Negotiations were formally restarted in November 2007 with now Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli premier Ehud Olmert at Annapolis, Maryland.

However in December 2008, Israel began a 22-day military offensive in the Gaza Strip which prompted the Palestinians to suspend talks.

Operation Cast Lead did not end 2007-08 talks. At a final meeting in September 2008, Abbas was to visit Olmert the following day or week. He did not do, despite effectively getting a 100% territorial concession, with some land swaps. Three months later, Operation Cast Lead began on the 27^th of December 2008, due to an increase of rocket attacks from Gaza. Olmert attested that:

“On the 16^th of September, 2008, I presented him (Abbas) with a comprehensive plan. It was based on the following principles…

Abbas wanted to take the map away. Olmert agreed, so long as they both signed the map. It was, from Olmert’s point of view, a final offer, not a basis for future negotiation. But Abbas could not commit. Instead, he said he would come with experts the next day.

“He (Abbas) promised me the next day his adviser would come. But the next day Saeb Erekat rang my adviser and said we forgot we are going to Amman today, let’s make it next week. I never saw him again.”

The article again places the blame on Israel for the collapse of the 2010 peace talks with Netanyahu:

Three years later, Barack Obama launched a new round of direct talks, hosted by Hillary Clinton at a White House summit with Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

They collapsed completely in September 2010 when Israel refused to keep in place a freeze on settlement building in Palestinian territories. Since then, while there has been quiet dialogue between the two sides, direct talks have been put on ice.

However, the 2010 talks did not collapse because Netanyahu refused to renew a ten month settlement freeze but rather because the PA demonstrated an extraordinary degree of bad faith by only coming to the talks in the last month, having utterly dismissed the concession previously. As George Mitchell said at the time, the PA made the freeze an absolute condition, after it having previously been “less than worthless”:

“We negotiated that and the Israeli leaders agreed to halt new housing in the West Bank for 10 months. It was much less than what we asked for but more than anyone else had done. The Palestinians rejected it as worse than useless. They were strongly opposed to it. Then nine months on, there were negotiations for a couple of weeks that were discontinued by the Palestinians on the grounds that Israel wouldn’t continue the settlement freeze. What had been less than worthless a few months earlier became indispensable to continue negotiations.”

The article presents Abbas is a moderate, by indicating that he has signalled he will waive the ‘right of return’. This belief was seized upon when he spoke in a somewhat symbolic fashion in 2012 of wishing to see a place where he would not live. It was interpreted as waiving the right of return but he denied doing so. Abbas often affirms that the right of return is not negotiable.

Ultimately, a narrative focusing to an undue extent on settlement issues, assists a negation of the fact that very large number of Palestinians, and their leaders, frequently signal their desire to destroy all of Israel, an elemental part of Arab-Palestinian culture, inculcated from childhood.

Water rights

The article includes dubious claims, relating to supposed water drilling restrictions for the Palestinian populace. This view echoes the water-apartheid charge, commonly made by the anti-Israel movement.

UN reports found that Palestinian water resources have been confiscated or destroyed as Israeli settlements move in and there are strict development restrictions on Palestinians that mean authorities often do not allow farmers to drill new irrigation wells.

The UN has estimated that as the population of Gaza grows and its economy is constricted, people living there will find it increasingly difficult to access enough drinking water.

The drilling of water legally requires the permission of a joint committee run by Israel and the Palestinian-Authority. It is a mutually agreed institution, developed under the Oslo II peace talks. However, the PA have acted recklessly in an almost systemic fashion by allowing the drilling of illegal wells, whilst failing to treat sewage. These problems have led to a very severe deterioration in water quality.

A similar problem has developed in Gaza with the illegal drilling of wells. Hamas, which constitutes the defacto government of Gaza, has consistently refused offers of Israeli assistance to improve water supplies. The issue has nonetheless been used by propagandists as a platform in which to attack Israel.

A history of bias

Journal.ie has a history of overt bias when it comes to dealing with the issue of Israel, a topic for which it has a surprising degree of interest. For example, the website offered an uncritical platform for the perspectives of a large number of prolific anti-Israel campaigners in an article of the 2nd of November, led by the words of Emer Costello MEP, Committee Chair of the European Parliamentary Palestine Delegation. Just one brief paragraph offered the Israeli perspective.

On November the 7^th, Journal.ie published an opinion-piece as reply, written by Mr. Boaz Modai, the Israeli Ambassador to Ireland, but this balancing act for a deficient news article was followed the next day by an article of rebuttal, written by Gary Spedding, a prolific anti-Israel campaigner of some notoriety, for possessing morally reprehensible stances on the Jewish State and its civilians.

Other examples include an opinion piece in June 2013, entitled “Governments aren’t doing enough to stop destructive land grabs”. The article claimed the demand for resources in the West is leading to effective governmental land grabs. However, it singled out Israel as the sole detailed example of political “land grabs”, despite the Jewish State failing to fit the central thesis of a Western country. The article carries one photo, of a Palestinian stone thrower. Thus, the article infers that such violent protestors are justifiably “resisting” at “great personal risk”, according to the body of the article.

In August, Journal.ie used scare-quotes around the word “murder” within a story about the recent release of convicted Arab-Palestinian terrorists, many of whom did indeed “murder” Israeli civilians.

Rob Harris contributes articles to several websites on contentious political issues (not to be confused with the popular English novelist (1957-) of the same name). He blogs at eirael.blogspot.com. He lives in Ireland. For all the exclusive blog entries by Rob Harris, go here.