Half A Democracy

Half a Democracy (a title I stole from an article by Gideon Levy) is a 72-slide presentation on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and the prospects for peace and reconciliation based on a Two-State solution.

I created "Half a Democracy" after reading the results of a survey that the Glasgow University Media Group conducted on the subject of UK TV news coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict during the early weeks of the Al-Aqsa Intifada (Sept-Oct 2000). The study found that BBC and ITN news scored high on images of fighting and violence, but low on explanations about underlying causes. The Glasgow group went on to survey 385 young adults who identified TV news as their primary source of information about the conflict. Their replies showed that they had absorbed the "main" message of the news, i.e. violence and tragedy. But, not surprisingly, most of them had little understanding of the reasons for the conflict, of its origins in the events of 1948 and 1967, and of the key issues needing to be resolved in a negotiated peace. For example:

On Refugees - Eighty per cent of those surveyed did not know where the Palestinian refugees had come from and how they had become refugees. On The Occupation - Many people did not understand that the Palestinians were subject to a military occupation; seventy-one per cent did not know that it was the Israelis who were occupying the Occupied Territories. On Settlements - Only 9% knew that the settlers were Israeli. There were actually more people (11%) who believed that the Palestinians were occupying the territories and that the settlers were Palestinian.

The survey also found that, in the absence of any discussion of origins and causes, news reports often portrayed the conflict as "normal" life randomly punctuated by inexplicable, unmotivated acts of Palestinian violence. ITN and BBC News oscillated between this view of events (which is also the view of the Israeli government), and the view that violence was perpetrated by both sides in a fatalistic "cycle" of "tit-for-tat" killings. The Palestinian view, that the violence is a symptom arising out of an illegal and violent occupation, was not represented at all.

This slide show is not a history of the Arab-Israeli conflict, but a collection of evocative quotes and images that illustrate the reality of the Occupation and show the importance of ending it if there is ever to be a just peace between Palestinians and Israelis. It is designed to show that the daily violence in Israel and the Occupied Territories is neither inexplicable nor nihilistic, nor a manifestation of some amorphous enemy in our War On Terror. Instead, it is rooted in the specific issues of Palestinian displacement and dispossession (since 1948), and the military occupation and creeping annexation of the remaining Palestinian Territories (since 1967). These are specific political issues for which a practical political resolution already exists, in the form of a just and even-handed two-state solution. The United States - the one party to this conflict with the greatest power to bring about fundamental change - ostensibly supports the two-state solution for Israel/Palestine as a goal of its foreign policy, but at the same time pursues strategic interests in the Middle East that are predicated on continuing Israeli rule over the Palestinians and Israel's military dominance over the region. As long as this conflict of interest continues, the United States will never be able to broker a genuinely just and lasting peace. An informed populace might press for our politicians for change: it was after all the mobilization of public opinion that eventually changed U.S. policy towards countries such as El Salvador, Guatemala and South Africa where, in the name of American strategic interests, our government enabled militaristic regimes to inflict on their own people policies that were an affront to what we thought were American values. But, as the Glasgow Media Group's survey suggests, the western TV News media is helping to create a populace that is far from informed. The damage that U.S. policy inflicts on the Palestinians is painfully apparent, but there is no serious discussion in the mainstream American media about the damage that we might be doing to ourselves, and to Israel. There is little public dialogue about whether U.S. strategic interests in the Middle East are better served by our aggressive support for an expansionist Israel and unrepresentative governments in the oil-rich Arabian peninsula, or by promoting demilitarization, the rule of law and regional development. Similarly, we do not publicly discuss the possibility that our huge military, diplomatic and economic support might provide Israel with an illusion of strength in the short term, but prevent the compromise peace and regional integration that Israel needs to survive as a Jewish state in the longer term. This slide show was created out of the belief that there is a Palestinian narrative, and a pro-peace narrative, that we in the West do not routinely hear. Welcome to "Half A Democracy".

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