Examination of Peace Journalism in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories: Challenges and Opportunities

Introduction

For the past six years, media in the Middle East have been engaged in reporting conflict rather than on conflict prevention. In some cases, media may even have, willingly or not, contributed to the heightening of conflicts. Middle East media exercising considerable influence over public opinion and may be seen as having contributed to the escalating cycle of violence through incitement, stereotyping and supporting growing disillusionment with the peace process. The media also serve to perpetuate stereotypes and journalists rarely question common assumptions or prevailing images in the media. Are the Israeli and Palestinian media aware that they can be used to control and manipulate public knowledge and opinion?

Challenges Facing Good Journalism in Israel and OPT

In the midst of the Israeli Palestinian conflict, it is really hard to talk about anything related to Peace. You can’t talk about good small stories of Israelis and Palestinians getting along somewhere, in this joint project or in that seminar abroad, because people respond to such statements with cynicism and doubt while the larger issues remain unresolved. Even if one reporter tries to implement the “whole story” approach, it is unconvincing.

For example, a peace oriented reporter tries to tell the whole story that surrounds a suicide bomber attack in Israel – the ongoing developments and the background that led to this bombing and the consequences and what actions should be taken to reduce the violence: this kind of report will not be perceived as neutral or objective because most of the audience does not want to listen to explanations in the heat of the moment. They would rather hear more information of the bloody incident. Israelis have become very cynical and more politically right-oriented in the face of such reports. On the Palestinian side, it is neither acceptable nor possible to tell the “other side’s” story of the bombing attack as a human suffering story. Such incidents appear in news reports as details where the number of causalities is reported: the story is covered in the context of a war situation, where numbers are given without names and the story implies that the act was only a reaction to and retaliation against what the "enemy" has done to “us”. The Palestinian media is conservative regarding this issue, there is no criticism nor are alternative or contradictory views discussed or exposed in public.

Many Palestinian journalists think that the profession is a sort of national patriotic task for them – playing a role in the struggle for freedom through the press and taking an active political role as journalists. This, I think, has to do with how Palestinians came to understand the role of the press and media during the Israeli occupation. And it demonstrates that much still needs to be accomplished in developing a more sophisticated understanding of the role of media. On the other side, even if the Israeli media is developing in a relatively democratic state, it suffers chronically from self censorship and sometimes outright censored when it addresses the conflict. In times of serious crisis Israeli media coverage adopts an absolute military agenda; the majority of the media give an exclusive platform to military personnel and to military correspondence, justifying their attitudes and interpretations without offering alternative viewpoints. For example, in the latest Lebanon war, the majority of the Israeli media facilitated the silencing of those who had different points of view – those who were against the war and those who refused to take the media’s military agenda for granted.

Regarding free and direct access to information in the field, few Israeli journalists travel to the Occupied Territories to visit the people they write about; the most critical problems they face are unreasonable self-censorship and constant stereotyping of the other side which appears in most reports. Going back to the OPT, the Palestinian media face many internal challenges which could sabotage any possibility for peace journalism: lack of unified code of ethics and code of conduct, harsh politically motivated self-censorship, and an obvious lack of positive human- centered news and success stories which could empower people and give them a sense of hope. A media professor from Birzeit University said, during the UNESCO World Press Freedom Day in Ramallah, "We are facing internal and external walls, can we deal with our internal wall? Can we reach the external physical one? If yes, can we jump over it? And if yes, what do we do then? How do we represent our case? We need a new speech, another language, and another thought in order to talk to the world and to our people differently". We do need another state of mind: both Palestinian journalists and the Palestinian people in general. It is a huge challenge, but not impossible: change the way we think and communicate and we overcome a significant part of the internal wall and perhaps the physical wall as well.

But on the external wall lies many external challenges that Palestinians have no control over. Palestinian journalists face daily physical difficulties in performing their job. They are very rarely granted Israeli press cards and they are often forbidden from travel inside Israel to Jerusalem, as well between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Access to these areas, especially during increased times of conflict, is severely restricted by the Israeli government – particularly during military operations or incursions to cities. The best example is the Jenin battle in April 2002. The journalists were prevented from traveling there during the battle and for the two subsequent days, so they didn't actually see the story they were reporting on. These conditions make the reporter's work nearly impossible: it leads, most of the time, to misleading facts or propaganda based on emotional reactions, and misleading declarations. This event had a tremendously negative influence on both peoples' feelings. The reporters believed that they "were just reporting the facts" but in reality both sides were manipulated and each had very different and extreme story. This reporting promoted and deepened hatred and was shown throughout the media
from all sides, foreign, Israeli and Palestinian.

The media’s lack of ability to distinguish between fact and perception is symptomatic of the challenges faced by both sides. But many Israeli and Palestinian journalists that I met, would like nothing more than to report in another way. Unfortunately, they are under the pressure of quotas and the demand for speed: they have little time to show compassion or humaneness. This situation leads to a general feeling of hopelessness in both communities. An Israeli reporter admitted to me "I can no longer listen to the stories of sufferings and injustice if I have no way of changing them.

Opportunities for Change

It seems reasonable to assume that if the media is part of the problem that has led to the violent conflict, then the media must also be a part of the solution. However, just as pro-war propaganda was not the sole cause of the war peace-oriented media cannot end conflict single-handedly. Despite their limitations, the media is a necessary element of every future peace operation. Here are five suggestions that might promote Peace Journalism in Israel and the OPT:

1. In order to provide reliable information to the public in times of violent conflict, the media (including journalists and editors) must be equipped with additional journalism skills. There has been little attention paid to education for peace and non-violent conflict resolution as an integral part of journalism training. Reporters need to develop an understanding of what causes conflict, how it develops and how it might be resolved peacefully, in order to serve the public well. Developing skills in analyzing conflict will enable reporters to be more aware individuals and thus, more effective professional journalists.

2. Due to the physical, political and social obstacles that journalists face when trying to implement the peace journalism principles in Israel and the OPT, there is an urgent need to draw or design a peace journalism perspective that is sensitive to the specific challenges of the region, but nevertheless, in harmony with the main principles of peace journalism in the world.

a. It should be a national or a local version and it may be called in our area "conflict sensitive reporting".
b. This version should translate the main principles to actual and practical steps.
c. It should be realistic, taking into account the nature of the long historical conflict.
d. It should address the thinking and the cultural codes of the region in order to be acceptable to journalists in the Middle East...
e. The local versions should be created separately in the OPT and in Israel, and will take into consideration the Political sensitivities of both sides while accenting common ground.

3. There is still a need for a peace relations agenda closely resembling a commercial public relations campaign. An integrated set of measures involving more than a single media channel or technique is vital to the success of the practice. In the absence of an integrated effort, a single broadcast program or even a single radio station (All for Peace) is unlikely to make a significant impact in a sea of media messages and outlets

4. Media on both sides need to accompany other social and political institutions in their pursuit of peace building. Many NGO's in Israel and in the OPT have been working for many years on joint projects whose focus is to bring social change through various educational program which may eventually lead to transformation of the conflict. However, there was no participation of the media in these efforts. Media and media professionals in Israel and in the OPT should commit themselves toward integration with the other institutions that are trying to promote understanding and communication.

5. The most important feature of post-violence conflict is the regulation of hate media or propaganda. There are very good documentaries on the conflict which could be categorized under the peace journalism approach. These documentaries are shown repeatedly on Israeli channels and on the private Palestinian TV stations but on the other hand these programs compete with a flood of propaganda: repetition of historical war films on certain dates during the year or the bloody reports during the news hour. This orientation accentuates the victimization of each group. The current media environment across television, radio and newspaper, reminds Israelis and Palestinians of their wounds, how they suffered and the wars they went through. This minimizes the chances of good media projects, like documentaries, positive lessons from war, etc. and the focus on the present and the future becomes marginal and irrelevant.

What Has Been Done So Far by IPMF, a UNESCO Funded Project?

IPMF is the Israeli Palestinian Media Forum, establishes in 1999 as a result of the Rhodes Conference in Greece, where a group of 120 Israeli and Palestinian media professionals gathered for a professional retreat. At the end of this assembly, the journalists requested that UNESCO provide assistance in setting up a Press House. Since then UNESCO is the sole sponsor of the office. The guiding principle of the Press House was that it would be open to all media professionals without discrimination. IPMF's strategy is straightforward and clear: once journalists meet and become familiar with each other and the other’s culture, cooperation and collaboration can begin, factual information can be shared, and bridges can be built instead of being destroyed.

• Since its creation until the second Intifada in 2000 the IPMF has run many activities to promote communication between both sides: We organized special press conferences and briefings in which Palestinian and Israeli decision-makers were introduced to journalists. We believed in field visits: exchange visits to media organizations as newspapers and television/radio stations, Palestinian journalists visited Israeli press houses and vice versa to the OPT. We worked with editors and field journalists as well,
through seminars and workshops on media issues.

• But one of our most important activities, as an example of an exemplary activity for Peace oriented journalism, was a field visit to the Balata refugee camp, near Nablus, in the OPT. We organized a trip for both Israeli and Palestinian journalists who were writing about this very crucial and unsolved issue of Palestinian refugees. It was in the year 2000 just a few months before the disintegration of the negotiations between both sides.

• Our aim was for them to see the real situation of those things they were writing about in their news stories: to meet with and listen to the stories of refugees and to hear first hand what they considered the real issues and problems to be. It was also an opportunity for journalists to see how these people live and what they are hoping for. It was a remarkable visit – and a first time for most of them; and it took them only one or two days after this visit to write and express their opinions across many Palestinian and Israeli newspapers on what they saw, and share their thoughts on the problem and possible solutions.

• Another exemplary peace oriented media project is a documentary. UNESCO, through IPMF, have initiated and sponsored and produced a Joint Israeli-Palestinian German television co-production “On the Road to Dialogue”. It was the first TV co-produced documentary between the official Palestinian TV PBC (Palestinian Broadcasting Corporation) and the Israeli private Channel 2 (Keshet) and a third party the ARD, Bavarian German TV.

The main idea behind the documentary is to show that the road to dialogue is long, difficult but worth the effort in order to appreciate and understand the other side. The directors, one from each community, take the story of the other side and travel from one city/village to another and show the social, economic and political situation of the

other while meeting and talking with people. The film also brought the positive sides of this conflict to light – showing happy people living ordinary lives alongside the misfortune ones. The third side was the German ARD channel who documented the two sides behind the scenes. Our real achievement was to convince both Israeli and Palestinian channels to broadcast the film jointly and simultaneously at the same hour which they did in November
2004 and that was a strong message to both peoples. In the year 2002, UNESCO decided to change the scope of our work due to the difficult political atmosphere in the area. Since then UNESCO through the IPMF mainly run empowerment projects for the media for each side separately. So we had numerous training workshops for journalists in the OPT and in Israel addressing several issues related to media empowerment of young journalists, radio and TV, training productions, media language courses and so on. We have been conducting several language courses for journalists - Israeli journalists were learning the Arabic language, media and culture and the Palestinian journalists were learning the Hebrew language, media and culture. The last course was conducted for the staff of Aljazeera channel 25. We are finalizing now a Hebrew-Arabic Glossary together with Birzeit University media center which is designed especially for Palestinian journalists use. It is a journalistic political book which provides journalists with a learning tool that can accompany them everywhere assisting them when listening and reading Hebrew news.
Lately, we had our first pilot Peace Journalism training in Switzerland, under UNESCO and Lassale Institut sponsorship. Veteran journalists from both sides joined this training with two Peace Journalism coaches from Europe. It was a remarkable training in spite of many difficult discussions; their main focus was on how the PJ principles can be applied. There was a lot of self criticism, especially when we worked with peace journalism language tools and made comparisons between current Israeli and Palestinian newspapers. In the end participants elaborated ten practical steps to improve the quality of journalism and diminish concepts of the enemy in order to
facilitate the discussion of potential solutions.

Some of the Results Agreed Upon in Writing by Both Sides

* Not to report only atrocities but also history context, possible consequences and alternative reactions
* Report on successful conflict solutions from other regions, like North Ireland or South Africa
* Mention the names of victims of both sides (not only of the own side)
* Report on positive events like meetings and reconciliations of the sides
* Find "Heroes of Non-Violence" and report about them
* Have a checklist of words commonly used, abolish exaggerating words. Double-check the facts
* Know the peace visions and the peace workers of the regions and consult them in cases of a conflict
* As far as possible replace the official version through own research
* Examine and assess one's self censorship

Our Aim Today is to Conduct Peace Journalism Trainings for Both Sides

A two to three day long training on the issues listed above accompanied by practical exercises would provide a good guide for those journalists who want to learn the peace journalism approach and apply it in their work. A Palestinian version and an Israeli version of peace journalism are needed in order to facilitate their unique situations. Trainings should be done separately, in order to be able to address the local media problems of each side and to create something convenient for each culture. Later it will be possible to build a Forum for Peace Journalism under UNESCO sponsorship. The forum will probably have modest beginnings as it attracts those journalists who really want to apply their knowledge, abilities and contacts and to publicize the value of a peace oriented media.

Carol Deniel Kasbari is a graduate of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and has an M.A. in Management of
Community Organizations, Non-profit Organizations and Public Policy. She also holds a double B.A. in Sociology
& Anthropology and French Literature. Ms. Kasbari has been actively engaged in a variety of mutual projects between Israelis and Palestinians and has expertise in the area of conflict resolution.

* An earlier version of this article was originally presented as an unpublished paper at the 1st International Peace Journalism Conference organized by the Faculty of Communication and Media Studies at Eastern Mediterranean University in North Cyprus between November 9th and 11th 2006. The conference presentations were given at both EMU and at the Fulbright Center in the capital city of Nicosia.