Monday, December 10, 2012

Setting the Record Straight: Distortions of Commission and Omission

Alan H. Stein, Ph.D.
 
The degree of misinformation and misunderstanding relating to the issues 
of the Arab-Israeli conflict is astounding. Patently false information 
is pervasive yet is often taken as common knowledge and falsely 
transmitted in conversations, over the Internet, in the traditional 
media and even by governments.
 
The dissemination of misinformation ramped up even further than usual 
recently in the aftermath of the vote at the United Nations giving 
"non-member state status" to the Palestinian Authority, an entity that 
in some ways resembles a state but falls far short of meeting the 
standard criteria. Misinformation also followed the announcement by 
Israel about planning for building in its capital and in a suburb and 
about preliminary planning for building between them in what's known as 
the "E1 corridor."
 
An article in The Day had the headline "Israeli settlement plan would 
split West Bank." Many news reports said the same thing while using 
different terminology, falsely asserting it would make a contiguous 
Palestinian Arab state impossible.
 
Some of the same articles included maps which conclusively illustrated 
the absurdity of the assertions.
 
The E1 corridor connects the suburb of Ma'ale Adumim with Jerusalem. 
It's a tiny area, roughly 4.6 square miles, less than half the size of 
New London, jutting a tiny bit into the area known for thousands of 
years as Judea and Samaria, until recently when Jordan began calling it 
the West Bank. In no way would keeping E1 in Israeli hands split the 
West Bank.
 
In actuality, not keeping E1 in Israeli hands would split Israel. Ma'ale 
Adumim, less than 10 miles from Jerusalem, has a population of 
approximately 40,000 people. There's absolutely no way Ma'ale Adumim 
would not remain part of Israel in any conceivable peace agreement; 
everyone knowledgable accepts that. If E1 wasn't retained by Israel, 
then Ma'ale Adumim would be split from the rest of Israel, which would 
no longer be contiguous.
 
The portions of the West Bank given to the Palestinian Arabs would still 
be contiguous, but there's also no way a Palestinian Arab state in both 
the West Bank and Gaza can be contiguous, at least not without splitting 
Israel in two.
 
It must be noted that while contiguity is certainly a nice attribute, 
it's hardly necessary for the viability of a state. Our United States is 
split into no fewer than three areas, with Hawaii separated from the 
mainland by thousands of miles of ocean and Alaska separated by one of 
the largest countries in the world. If there is an Arab-Israeli peace, 
it will be far easier to travel between Ramallah and Gaza than it is to 
travel between New York and Anchorage.
 
The media is also guilty of contributing to false impressions by failing 
to include documented facts relating to items they do report.
 
As one example, the interim agreement signed by Israel and the PLO in 
1995 included the provision "Neither side shall initiate or take any 
step that will change the status of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip 
pending the outcome of the permanent status negotiations."
 
The action by Mahmoud Abbas of going to the United Nations to gain 
status as a "non-member state" was a blatant violation of that 
provision, something one would never know from the general media.
 
This is not just a technicality, since it relates greatly to the 
question of the trust necessary for the "partners" to negotiate in good 
faith.
 
Related to that are the repeated references to a Palestinian Arab state 
based on the "1967 borders." These references ignore the fact that there 
were no borders in 1967, but merely armistice lines. More important, 
negotiations based on  those lines are a violation of the armistice 
agreements.
 
The armistice agreement between Israel and Jordan contained the 
provision: "It is also recognised that no provision of this Agreement 
shall in any way prejudice the rights, claims and positions of either 
Party hereto in the ultimate peaceful settlement of the Palestine 
question, the provisions of this Agreement being dictated exclusively by 
military considerations."
 
Similar provisions were contained in all the armistice agreements, 
ironically at the insistence of the Arabs!
 
One may reasonably ask how one can trust negotiations when they are 
based on a violation of previous agreements?
 
Newspapers and other media have a responsibility to be accurate, to 
point out when officials are saying things that aren't true and also to 
include highly relevant information. When it comes to the Arab-Israeli 
conflict, they are failing on all three counts.
 
---
 
 
Alan Stein, Ph.D.
President Emeritus
PRIMER-Connecticut
Promoting Responsibility in Middle East Reporting
www.primerct.org
 

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