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May 1998 return to index |
MER - Washington - 5/25: The West has vast experience with "client regimes" in the oil-rich and now Israeli-oriented Middle East region -- the Hashemites and the al-Sauds going back to the time of Lawrence of Arabia, the al-Sabahs of Kuwait and others soon to follow. Now, after the Israelis and their American allies tried everything else for decades, the creation of the Arafat regime -- "the Authority" -- is the most crafty attempt yet to arm and finance one Arab faction to control and repress the others. And make no mistake about it, this grand scheme was conceived, and is being carried out, in close coordination with the now long-standing Arab client regimes in the region, most especially the Hashemites in Jordan. Repressing, censoring, and controlling the press is a major goal of any such regime or "Authority". The Muhabarat of Jordan are well-known for instilling fear throughout the country, especially among the majority Palestinian population. And Hashemite control and manipulation of the media has become quite sophisticated in recent years -- our recent article about "Arabia On-Line" a good example. The following expose of how the Palestinian media has been censored, repressed, and co-opted comes from a very knowledgeable Israeli writer, Roni Ben Efrat, editor of Challenge, one of the few principled magazines still being published in the region. Part 1 today, Part 2 tomorrow.
THE TELLTALE SILENCE OF THE ** The Palestinian Authority oppresses its people and intimidates its press. In what follows I shall give examples of this intimidation, nine in all, picked out of a multitude. But let me say at the start that this fact should not come as a surprise. Oppression may be said to be a corollary of the Oslo agreement. The logic is simple: The strong side, Israel, took advantage of its strength, cutting a deal that gave the weak side, the PLO, as little as possible. The designers of Oslo set up, in other words, a situation where people, a great many people, were bound to oppose the deal they had gotten. Although they lacked the foresight to make real peace, they did foresee the opposition to the nasty, brutish thing that they did make, and they were careful, therefore, to provide the new non-state with a huge police force and plenty of rifles. Imprisonment without trial is the norm. Torture is carried out wholesale. Numerous security organisations vie with one another in extortion, and big brother is everywhere. The curbing of the press is merely a part of this general picture. The most alarming aspect in the story has been the speed with which the press agreed to lay down its weapon, the pen. The first acts of oppression The press was the first to be hit. Arafat arrived in Gaza on July 1, 1994. Twenty-seven days later, forces of the Palestinian Secret Security invaded the offices of Al-Nahar, then the second largest daily in the Territories. They forbade the distribution of Al-Nahar in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. (According to the Oslo accords, in fact, they had no jurisdiction at the time in the West Bank - except for Jericho - nor in Jerusalem, but when it comes to oppression, Israel gives the PA a free hand.) No explanation was given, but it was understood that the closing of Al-Nahar had to do with the paper's pro-Jordanian tendency. The rest of the Palestinian press hardly covered the event. Palestinian human rights activist Bassem Id, then of B'tselem, initiated a protest demonstration, and eight journalists showed up. Perhaps all the others thought it wouldn't happen to them - They, after all, are not "pro-Jordanian"! The epilogue: Al Nahar began publishing again after several weeks, but it soon collapsed financially. (For the full story Challenge # 27). Four months later it was the turn of the biggest Palestinian daily, Al-Quds, also published in Jerusalem. On November 18, Authority forces killed fourteen Palestinians during a demonstration at a mosque in Gaza. The opposition party Hamas held a mass rally protesting the massacre. Gaza's Chief of Police, General Ghazi Jibali, sent the press his estimate that 5000 people had attended. To his consternation, Al-Quds preferred the estimate of a foreign press agency, which had counted 12,500. Jibali's response was to keep Al-Quds from entering the Gaza Strip. He simply blocked the papers at the Erez checkpoint for a number of days, claiming that heavy rain and floods were preventing their distribution. I interviewed the chief editor of Al-Quds, Maruan Abu Zuluf, concerning the strange weather in Gaza. He firmly adherred to his right to publish whatever he saw fit. (Challenge # 29: "Gaza Weatherman"). Ever since that incident, however, Al-Quds has never dared to publish a word contradicting the official Palestinian line. Not even a paid ad. The third incident involved an independent Palestinian opposition paper called Al-Uma, which was also located in Jerusalem. In the eighties its owners, members of the Khatib family, had put out a left- wing daily, Al-Mithaq, but Israel had closed it down. In January 1995, however, Israel granted the Khatibs a license for Al-Uma. Four months later the paper published an unflattering cartoon of Arafat. Thirty armed Palestinians, members of Preventive Security, entered the print shop and confiscated the plates. The angry editors alerted human rights organizations. Palestinian figures signed a petition. On May 3rd, the offices of Al-Uma were burned. The Khatibs never went back to publishing (Challenge # 32). Self Censorship Since these incidents, the Palestinian Authority has licensed quite a few new media projects. Some of these function as mouthpieces for the Authority - for example, Al Khayat al Jadida or the radio station, Sout Falastin. All, however, mouthpieces or not, practice strict self-censorship. This may seem odd at first, because the Authority itself, with super-democratic panache, forgoes all official censorship. On June 25, 1995, Arafat signed the Palestinian Press Law, which guarantees the right to freedom of opinion and a free press. It does contain, nonetheless, several vague and potentially restrictive provisions. Article 37(3), for example, prohibits the publication of anything that "may cause harm to national unity".(Human Rights Watch, op. cit.) In reality, censorship Arafat-style has proved to be more zealous and harsh than Israel's ever was. To quote the Authority's radio director, Ali Khayan: "The opposition can express its own opinions, but some things are not allowed because we need time to explain what it means to be democratic." (Challenge # 32.) Under Israeli occupation Palestinian journalists did indeed suffer from oppression. There are stories of chief editors, in house arrest, who edited major dailies from their homes. Numerous journalists were kept in Administrative Detention for renewable periods of six months at a time. But such measures did not intimidate them. When they got out, they went back to their work. Today it is different. Why? * Roni Ben Efrat is Editor
of Challenge Magazine in Jerusalem. |
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