Palestinian Voices: Communication and Nation Building in the West Bank 9781685852528

Citation preview

Palestinian Voices

Palestinian Voices Communication and Nation Building in the West Bank Dov Shinar

Lynne Rienner Publishers • Boulder

Published in the United States of America in 1987 by Lynne Kienner Publishers, Inc. 9 4 8 North Street, Boulder, Colorado 8 0 3 0 2 ® 1987 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-ln-Publication Data Shinar, Dov. Palestinian voices. Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Mass media—West Bank. West Bank.

2. C o m m u n i c a t i o n —

3. Social interaction—West Bank.

I. Title. HN660.Z9M37

1987

302.2'095694

86-20229

ISBN 0-931477-41-7 (lib. bdg.)

Distributed outside o f North and South America and Japan by Frances Pinter (Publishers) Ltd, 25 Floral Street, London WC2E 9DS England Printed and bound in the United States o f America

T h e paper used in this publication adheres to the new (8)

American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, Z39.48-1984.

Contents Preface

ix

The Background

1

1

Communications and Palestinian Nation Building

3

2

A Sociopolitical Overview of the West Bank

21

Mass Communications in the West Bank

37

3

Stocktaking

39

4

Palestinian Media: Content, Style, and Language

48

5

Control, Structure, and Organization

61

Tradition, Community, and Art as Communication Systems

77

6

Primordial Networks: Religious, Familial, and Open Community Channels

79

7

Community-Organized Networks

95

8

Palestinian Nation Building in Poetry and Fiction

117

9

The Theater and the Visual Arts as Communications Networks

132

Conclusions

151

10

The Interplay of Communication Networks in the West Bank

153

11

Policy and Research on Communications and Nation Building

164

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

v

vi

Contents Appendix:

Note on Methodology

174

Notes

179

Bibliography

201

Index

203

Illustrations Tables 2.1 2.2 2.3 10.1 10.2 10.3

The Educational System in the West Bank, 1968-1981 Results of the Tawjihi Examination in The West Bank, 1968-1984 Schematic Profile of West Bank Universities Structural-Organizational Classification of Communication Networks in the West Bank Structural-Organizational Continuum of West Bank Communication Networks Functional Organization ofWest Bank Communication Networks

32 33 34 154 155 156

Figure 2.1

Israel and the Occupied Territories

24

Photos 9-0 9.1 9.2 93 94 9.5 9.6 9.7 9-8 9.9 9.10 911 9.12 9.13 914 9.15 9.16 9.17

The brides in The Story of the Eye and the Tooth Kamal al-Mughanny, Thirst Suleiman Mansur, Development Poster Kamal al-Mughanny, Tal al-Zaatar Suleiman Mansur, Children in Jerusalem Hader Abu Ahmed, oil on canvas Nabil Anani, oil on canvas Nabil Anani, From Halhul Poster Suleiman Mansur, The Future Suleiman Mansur, Hope Suleiman Mansur, Prisoner's Day Tayasir Barakat, oil on canvas Suleiman Mansur, Salma Kamal al-Mughanny, Partnership Poster Poster

vii

133 141 141 142 142 143 143 144 144 144 145 145 145 146 147 \Al 147 148

9.18 919 9.20 9.21 9.22

Nabil Anani, Lebanon Kamal al-Mughanny, Settlement Suleiman Mansur, Bread ofTabbon Kamal al-Mughanny, Untitled Kamal al-Mughanny, Prisoner's Day

148 148 149 150 150

Preface Until the late 1970s I saw the Palestinians in superficial, almost abstract terms. Before 19671 was one of many Israelis who used to look at the other side from the roof of the Notre Dame monastery, near the Israeli-Jordanian no man's land in Jerusalem, high above the concrete walls and the snipers' positions that separated both parts of the city. In the Six Day War I fought in the battle ofJerusalem, but did not enter the Old City as a conqueror. AJordanian mortar shell sent me to a military hospital instead of to the Wailing Wall. As soon as the war was over, I joined many others and crossed the former borderline into East Jerusalem and the West Bank. I drove along its roads, cautious and wide-eyed, exploring the neighboring culture as a foreigner, as a tourist. I met with Palestinians in commercial exchanges, I stood guard and went on patrol during long periods of military reserve service, I read newspapers and watched television, I hated terrorism and criticized terrorists, but my involvement was much more remote than the 3 kilometers that separated my home from the homes of my nearest Palestinian neighbors. Ibrahim Dakak, a Palestinian engineer and trade union activist, introduced me in a more direct fashion to the intricacies of the Palestinian problem. We met in Salzburg, where both of us attended a seminar in 1979- We talked in a peaceful Austrian Scbloss, on the shores of the lake where Julie Andrews fell in the water during the filming of The Sound of Music. In addition to his political views, one of Dakak's remarks struck me emotionally and intellectually. "You see," he said, "we are the Jews of this age, oppressed by occupation, forsaken by the world, even by our own brethren. But we are struggling, and like the Jews, we shall achieve our rights." This touched my humanity, my politics, and my professional interest. A journalist friend, Dani Rubinstein, one of the most realistic and humane experts on Palestinian matters, gave me some guidance and allowed me to join him in a number of fact-finding trips in the West Bank. Through him I sharpened my so-far superficial outlook. About the same time, Ayatollah Ruholla Khomeini's revolution began to be taken seriously by the rest of the world, and as I had been acquainted with Iran through my ongoing work on communications in the Third World, I began to wonder about the role of communications in Palestinian liberation and nation building, the major components of the social revolution that was occurring in the West Bank. Together with interested students at the Communications Institute of the Hebrew University, I began to explore some of the issues arising on this subject. Then, with some funds provided

ix

x

Preface

by the National Council of Research and Development, I undertook a more systematic investigation. Fortunately, Ahmad Natur, an Israeli-Arab graduate student at the institute, joined the project as a research associate. His knowledge of the field, his strong motivation and industriousness, and the fact that we developed a good personal rapport were a great contribution to the project. He assisted in the search and selection of interview subjects, which was followed by the interviews and the collection of documents and literature during some eighteen months starting in mid-1981 (but excluding the critical months of the 1982 war in Lebanon). Anthony Kingsley was a second devoted participant in this phase, particularly in what concerned Palestinian art and culture. A preliminary report was submitted to the council in July 1983- In the autumn of the same year, I was fortunate again, and was given the opportunity to spend several months of a sabbatical leave at the Institute for Middle East Peace and Development of the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. My contacts with Professor Stephen Cohen, the institute's director, and with his U.S., Palestinian, and Israeli associates provided deeper insights and detailed information, especially on the process of Palestinian nation building. The facilities provided at the institute, including a soundproof, windowless office above one of New York's noisiest corners, at Fifth Avenue and Forty-second Street, were instrumental in producing the first draft for Chapter 1 of the book. Upon returning to Jerusalem, I was encouraged by the Harry S. Truman Institute for the Advancement of Peace, and particularly by Dr. Eddie Kaufmann, the executive director, to spend part of 1984 and most of 1985 updating facts, gathering and cross-checking additional evidence, analyzing the data, and producing this book. During this period a small research team began to work. It included Avner Halpern, a doctoral candidate in history, whose background, knowledge of Arabic, and positive approach were important for the collection, translation, and interpretation of documents and other written sources. A group of graduate students at the Communications Institute, who actively participated in a research seminar and dived into the subject beyond "the call of duty," was a great help: Taher al-Makawi, Shmuel David, Yoav Der'i, Hanna Katz, Ruth Levitov, Gila Lifshitz, Omar Nasserallah, Meira Rosenfeld, Eliraz Strauss, and Arnon Yahel. Dr. Meron Benvenisti, a well-known Israeli expert, my high school classmate Yossi Amitay, and a group of Palestinian academics and journalists gave me the benefit of their knowledge and experience during this time, as did a group of military government officials, with whom I met several times at the instigation of Professor Moshe Maoz to discuss some of the preliminary findings. The manuscript was typed by Laraine Goldberg, of the Faculty of Social Science at the Hebrew University, who bravely dealt with my linguistic excesses. Her criticisms, a product of political views different from mine, were

Preface

xi

invaluable in reducing biases in analysis and interpretation. Amir Salman produced the photographs, and David Kerpel produced the map. My deep gratitude to all who participated in the efforts invested in this book. DovShinar

Part 1 The Background

1

Communications and Palestinian Nation Building

The Coming of Age of Palestinian Nation Building Palestinian nation building has come of age. "The Palestinian movement," a respected Israeli analyst wrote in 1983, "led in the last fifteen years by the PLO, has built a self-aware n a t i o n . . . . There is no point in using the worn-out argument that the Palestinians have no cultural, religious, historic, or linguistic uniqueness.... In terms of nation-building, the Palestinians have had nothing but achievements in the past few years."' Indeed, the denial of the very existence of a Palestinian national entity, voiced in earlier years by Israeli prime ministers and members of the Knesset, has become as unacceptable as formulas designed to solve the "Palestinian problem" by means of emigration to Arab countries, or by advocating the conquest of the East Bank, an idea promoted now only by fanatics and frustrated generals. Such views have been replaced by more realistic positions, adopted even by outspoken hard-liners, who have pragmatically and officially recognized "the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people." 2 Gone, too, are the days when a Jordanian king could issue a decree forbidding the use of the word "Palestine" in official documents, 3 or could seek to eliminate West Bank separatist trends by means of lip service to the cause of Palestine, financial support, or bloodshed. Now, demands for full integration into the kingdom have lost momentum and have been replaced by formulas and scenarios that emphasize various shades of Palestinian self-expression, selfrepresentation, and self-determination. As for the Palestinians themselves, most experts agree that their sporadic and anomic reactions to the shock of defeat and occupation have crystallized into the revival of a full-fledged national movement, which featured more consistent policies and more rational behavior 4 than were the

3

4

The Background

case in earlier years. Thus, although external recognition of a Palestinian entity represents a necessary condition for legitimacy, the reemergence of a Palestinian national consciousness, the consolidation of an institutional infrastructure, and socioeconomic change and modernization must be sought as sufficient conditions for Palestinian nation building.

national

Consciousness

Between the wars of 1948 and 1967, the establishment of independent Palestinian political authority was hindered by Jordanian annexation. Palestinian dependence on the kingdom's resources and reliance on pan-Arab and panIslamic symbols'5 left one major avenue open for the promotion of national aspirations: the violent propaganda voiced by Ahmad Shuqairi, appointed by the Arab League in 1964 to head the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). The Israeli occupation of the West Bank has been accompanied by an increasing realization of a Palestinian self and, paradoxically, by relative liberation from external influence. This awareness has been expressed in such self-critical statements as "June [the 1967 war] happened because our culture is still one of beautiful words.... We still prefer to listen to inciting poetry than to set up a cooperative or any other positive project... .June happened because our history stood still, while the history of the entire world advanced . . I n the years following 1967 national objectives were articulated in ever-clearer and more realistic ways and progressed from a demand for return to the status quo ante, voiced by the traditional proHashemite elite, to plans for the establishment of a democratic secular state in all the territory of historical Palestine, to de facto recognition of Israel and less radical demands for an independent Palestinian state in any part of Palestine.7 Demonstrations of national unity have become more effective and stand in contrast to the previous lack of grass-roots organization. Before 1967 Arab control prevented Palestinians from developing a full sense of identity. The absence of political leaders, some of whom sat in Jordanian prisons, was further exacerbated by policies of intimidation and deportation in the initial years of Israeli occupation. But this situation as well as occupation policies of atomization and "increasing the price of resistance" also served to motivate and mobilize the masses." Strikes, demonstrations, civil disobedience, and petitions increased in number and impact. After the October 1973 war, a wide pro-PLO consensus developed in the West Bank in response to the question of who was to represent the Palestinian cause.9 In contrast with the Israeli, Jordanian, Egyptian, and U.S. preference for representation by the moderate West Bank mayors, the popular mood was viv-

Communications and Nation Building

5

idly expressed by a good-humored Palestinian who said that "as things are, the mayors have to apply to the military governor for spare parts for their municipal vehicles. How can they negotiate peace?" 10 The victory of PLO-supported candidates in the municipal elections of 1976, and the massive identification with the organization during and after the war in Lebanon, further illustrated the PLO's capture of the most strategic positions in the struggle regarding Palestinian representation. The PLO's control has been ineffectively countered by the manipulations of Arab states, by Israeli attempts to establish an alternative leadership—the Village Leagues—and by attempts to physically exterminate the PLO made by both Israel and Arab states (that is, the Syrian-supported Tal Zaatar massacre in 1976 and the Israeli intervention in Lebanon beginning in the mid-1970s and culminating in the 1982 war). On another level, temporary solutions were found by the Palestinians for coping with occupation. In contrast to the ineffective outbursts of violence in the West Bank, in Israel, and abroad that characterized the initial years of occupation, the concept of sumud (standing fast) evolved as a temporary formula for daily existence. Sumud symbolizes a pragmatic and rational compromise between a desperate, hopeless uprising and feelings of undignified surrender. It is a temporary device, a "third way"'1 for the solution to conflicts in perception and self-acceptance. Likewise, Sumud guides day-to-day behavior toward the Israeli presence in the West Bank. The value of land and a historical perspective have served to lay the foundations of sumud. "Who has no land has no honor," says a Palestinian folk proverb. An entire school of Palestinian poetry has concerned itself with the meaning of land.' 2 Holding onto the land, "not to leave, not to turn your back to occupation," has become an imperative, a means to prevent a repetition of the national trauma caused by the exodus of 1948, which is known as "the disaster."13 "The word sumud was not used before 1967," a leading journalist stated, "because although Palestinians were aware of the need to preserve their national identity vis-à-vis Jordanian annexation, the land was not in danger; it was in Arab hands. Israel's main objective, on the other hand, is to force West Bankers to emigrate, to tear the Palestinians from their land."14 The first reaction to Israeli occupation was a negative sumud in which the public denounced any contacts with the authorities and popular opinion encouraged active resistance. The well-known journalist RaymondaTawil— founder and director of the Palestine Press Service (PPS), which has actively supported and apparently has been financed by the PLO—reports that she found a threatening letter signed by Fatah (the military forces of the PLO) in her mailbox shortly after the Six Day War. The letter condemned her and her family for maintaining contacts with the occupation authorities, for playing host to Israelis in her home, and for visiting "enemy territory," namely, her

6

The Background

hometown of Acre. Although admitting these "sins" on the grounds of her humanitarian work on behalf of war refugees, she reported that most of her acquain tances shunned her. Even her husband grew afraid of being accused of collaboration and treason.15 The conclusion Palestinians drew from daily realities was that despite its symbolic value, active resistance was secondary to holding onto the land. Occupation procedures, Palestinian interpretations of statements made by Israeli officials, and the behavior of Jewish settlers underlined fears that Israel would use Palestinian resistance as an excuse to embark on a policy of massive deportation and land expropriation. Whether justified or not, such feelings led to an attitude of compliance with the occupation that did not, however, imply Palestinian acceptance of the Israeli presence. A more positive version of sumud consequently developed, one that allowed Palestinians to have contact with Israel and Israelis provided these contacts did not contradict Palestinian national interests. It has permitted them to work in Israel (including on the construction of new settlements), to meet with Israelis, and to participate in events organized by them. But this sumud precludes the sale of land, collaboration with initiatives to replace the PLO in its leading position, acceptance of compensation for expropriated land, or adoption of Israeli citizenship. According to Professor Emanuel Sivan, this outlook is supported by a historical perspective based on the downfall of the Crusaders in Palestine after two hundred years of "occupation" and of French colonial rule of Algeria after one hundred thirty years. This awareness of the history of occupation has served to maintain Palestinian hopes that the Israeli presence is temporary and that changes may be expected. Facing a dilemma not unlike the one faced by communist parties in the West (resisting an anticommunist regime versus collaborating with it to protect the party's interests), the Palestinian national movement has reached the conclusion that positive sumud is more instrumental in speeding the historical process and does not require relinquishing cherished values of land and national pride.16 The resultant modus operandi has given rise to unique Palestinian national features. Thus, sumud should be considered in the framework of symbolic and cultural development as expressed, for example, by the national black, white, red, and green flag, the development of the press and the theater, and the "boom in cultural products and events... beginning with poets ... and on through exhibitions, posters, jamborees, sports events and the renaissance of traditional embroidery."17 Institutional Infrastructure In addition to the upsurge in national consciousness and identity, efforts have been made by Palestinians and the PLO to institutionalize Palestinian

Communications and Nation Building

7

nationhood. The lack of autonomous Palestinian institutions during the Jordanian period underwent drastic changes following 1967, sufficient to allow Ann Lesch to state thirteen years later (on the basis of Elias Nakhleh's data), that the Palestinian diaspora has the structure of the PLO: the Executive Committee, Palestine National Council (the Parliament-in-Exile).... Within the West Bank . . . there are municipalities and village councils, and a complex network of charitable and professional societies that provide medical, social welfare, educational and economic services. Moreover, Palestinian staff presently serve under Israeli Military Administration and are responsible for assisting the residents in the fields of agriculture, social services, health and education.'"

Israeli experts do not deny these developments. Despite the exaggeration in Lesch's statement that "the conditions necessary for a state already exist," their importance has not been overlooked. 19 A noted Israeli academic who served as an adviser to the occupation authorities admitted in 1980 that in the last two years the PLO, jointly with the leadership in the territories, . . . has been establishing an infrastructure, seen as a basis for a Palestinian s t a t e . . . . This has been expressed in the organization of the political community—the National Council, which in addition to the mayors, includes representatives of trade unions, such as engineers, physicians, women, students and workers . . . the Council for Higher Education, which consists of representatives of the Colleges in the territories.... In addition, front organizations [women, students, and others] have been established [and] schools, hospitals and other [industrial infrastructural] projects are being established.... In order to finance such a wide organizational effort, PLO and Baghdad Conference funds are being pumped into the territories at an estimated rate of 150 million dollars annually, of which 100 million go to the West Bank. 20

More recently, a Palestinian fundraising effort was begun in the United States, with the objective of providing resources for the development of the West Bank economic infrastructure. Modeled after the United Jewish Appeal, this effort is intended to coordinate and plan national projects.21

Socioeconomic Change and Modernization Deep socioeconomic changes in recent years reveal a restructuring of society in the West Bank. Even before 1967 West Bank society had begun to grapple with a "crisis of modernization" provoked by the conditions under which the society had been developing for some decades. 22 The process was accelerated by new circumstances. The unexpected and humiliating defeat in the war enhanced a mood of self-criticism among Arabs in general and

8

The Background

among Palestinians in particular, which soon led to a rejection of many old values and to a challenging of the moral authority vested in their keepers. Aziz Shehadeh, a well-established Ramallah attorney, who was assassinated in 1985 probably because of his moderate position, contended that "with the June war all previous modes of life were shattered. The whole social structure was challenged. All previous values and convictions were put to test.... The previous manner of life now seemed so false, so wrong.... Something basic was wrong. The organization of society, the values, the ideals were all upset."23 Jamil Hamad, a Palestinian journalist from Bethlehem, elaborated on this topic by saying that the June defeat "has undermined his [the Arab's] belief in his own culture, in his blind faith that Allah's people possess superior qualities to those of the infidels; it has shown Arab civilization evaluated in twentieth century terms to be technologically backward, culturally deprived and politically impotent."24 A more tangible expression of change has been the disruption of the traditional class system. Jobs in Israel, higher salaries, and a more equitable income distribution that extended even to unskilled workers weakened the position of notable families, landowners, merchants, professionals, and civil servants. Although some analysts make a direct connection between improved income and status change, others suggest that firsthand exposure to Israel has been an influential intervening variable because Palestinian workers have witnessed Israel's strong institutions, which protect Israeli workers, and the Israeli attachment of dignity to work.2,5 Despite the fact that these developments have strengthened the Palestinian sense of identity in the West Bank, they also have reflected problems of internal cohesion and distribution of power. Shabtai Tevet, for example, in elaborating these problems, mentions not only talk of a political strike among employees of the military administration, but also frequent nonpolitical strikes at Nablus factories belonging to Mayor Haj Ma'azuz al-Masri, one of the Hashemite notables, and among such public servants as street cleaners, hospital workers, and teachers.26 Although these strikes were directed, in part, against Israel, they also reflected divisions among Palestinians. A gradual adoption of secular modern values and behavior represents another dimension of change in the West Bank. "Traditional social habits," William Quandt wrote, "are being eroded, and conscious efforts are being made to instill ideas of self-reliance, activism and progress among a population that has long been neglected, embittered and apathetic."2" Ahmad Dhaher confirmed one aspect of the process in his study "Changing Cultural Perceptions of the Palestinians," where he reported a shift in the primary loyalty of educated Palestinian youth from family to homeland.2" Liberalization of relations between the sexes, adoption of Western clothing styles among men and women alike, changing patterns of leisure, entertainment,

Communications and Nation Building

9

and artistic expression—all are examples of change on the behavioral level.29 Finally, modernization is apparent in the enhanced role of Palestinian women in the forefront of protest against occupation as well as the expansion of their educational and job opportunities. My Home, My Prison by Raymonda Tawil elaborated the increasingly effective, yet uphill struggle of Palestinian women.30 The latent dimension of this struggle is illustrated by Sylvie Mansour's research, which found that although Palestinian adolescent boys are both more militant and more frustrated than girls in their attempts to cope with identity problems, girls picture their ideal selves in the context of Palestinian resistance.31 The manifest dimension finds an outline in such comments as: "West Bank men who see the free life led by Israeli girls, sometimes even enjoying their company, tend to react when they get back home by being stricter than ever with their own womenfolk."32

The Forces at Work The coming of age of Palestinian nation building features most of the ingredients typical of development processes in the Third World—collective integration, cultural renaissance, and socioeconomic change—in what has been called an "interplay between institutional change and cultural reconstruction."33 This process can be characterized as a series of simultaneous, multidimensional interactions between internal and external forces, out of which a variety of functional and dysfunctional results may emerge in different patterns, rates, and rhythms.34 Now that I have delineated the major features of these processes, at least one additional question remains to be dealt with before considering the role of communication. What forces have been active in determining the direction and intensity of Palestinian nation building in recent decades?

The Occupation Israel is viewed by many as the determining factor in the revival of Palestinian nation building. A senior Israeli official in the civilian administration sarcastically proposed that "Zionist genius" had created two national movements and that "we shall live to see the day when it will have created two independent states."35 A more academic analysis contended that "a combination of unplanned practices and unintended consequences of deliberate policies, the Israeli victory in June 1967 and the subsequent Israeli occupation of the West Bank conspired to hasten the formation of a unified national Palestinian entity—notwithstanding the internal divisions—and to entrench

10

The Background

the support for one organization above the others."-1" Indeed, Israel has performed at least two functions that have contributed to the process of Palestinian nation building: that of a model and that of a catalyst. Israel's role as a social model is not only evident in the new behaviors adopted by West Bank residents. Israel is considered by some Palestinian observers to possess what Jamil Hamad termed "superb organizational planning at all levels of society, which provided Israel with an internal cohesion rarely encountered in the Western world." 17 In less awed words, another prominent Palestinian stated that Israel supplied a model for a social outlook that contradicted the previous reality, in which "no attempt [was] made anywhere to organize Palestinian self-help through economic and social activity. The only attempt toward organization was political or semi-military."18 These and other statements19 are compatible with Israeli views that "while Jewish nationalism was relatively successful in imbuing its ideology and praxis with a view of social transformation, Arab nationalism remained mainly political and, by ignoring the social dimension, was unable to achieve a degree of social cohesion comparable to the one achieved in the social structures of Israel.""" Exposure to this model increased considerably with the fall of physical barriers between the West Bank and Israel and with the application of occupation policies. Susceptibility to the model was aided by the loosening of economic bonds between the Palestinian masses and their traditional overlords, which contributed to the erosion of authority and value systems. Many of the social tensions that largely had been contained under Jordanian rule began to surface and gain momentum under Israeli occupation. By playing the role of a legitimate target in the Palestinian struggle for nationhood and by replacing the less convenient struggle against Jordanian-Muslim authority, Israel undoubtedly was instrumental in catalyzing these social and political tensions. These processes did not necessarily begin with the inception of Israeli rule, but its advent accelerated their pace and contributed to their direction. In the end Israel fulfilled "the role of midwife to a fundamental social and economic revolution in Arab Palestine.... But she has neither manufactured its preconditions nor will she indefinitely be able to contain its results."41

The Arab States The Arab states have performed a contradictory role in the consolidation of the struggle for Palestinian self-determination. On the one hand, massive financial support has been pumped into the West Bank by Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Libya, and other governments and statesponsored organizations. On the other, a series of events has led to rising

Communications and Nation Building

11

disillusionment and resentment among Palestinians toward Arab states: the Jordanian suppression of a 1970 PLO attempt to establish a state within a state in the kingdom (later known as Black September), a move that "devastated Jordanian-Palestinian relations"42; the 1976 massacre at Tal Zaatar in which the Syrian Army stationed in Lebanon allowed right-wing Christian militias to besiege and destroy a large refugee camp near Beirut; the passive role allocated to the Palestinians by the Sadat peace initiative; and the indifferent attitude of Arab countries to the Israeli disruption of the PLO logistic and military infrastructure in Lebanon. Given this background, it is not surprising that West Bank leaders have remarked that "we have learned that the help given by the leaders of the Arab states is limited and goes only up to a point" and that "we are the Jews of this age, oppressed by occupation, forsaken by the word, even by our own brethren." 43 These statements may be taken as evidence of the role played by Arab countries in promoting a particularistic Palestinian national consciousness and self-reliance.

Palestinian Organizations The PLO has been of vital importance in enhancing the growth of Palestinian nationalism. Founded in 1964 by the Arab League, the PLO gradually transformed itself from a government-sponsored propaganda agency into a largely autonomous organization. It developed into a group of Palestinians working for Palestinians, operating according to the will of Palestinians, and representing the concept and reality of a national movement. Regardless of its methods of intimidation and terrorism in Israel, the West Bank, and elsewhere and its controversial achievements, the PLO introduced a revolutionary dynamic into Palestinian nation building. The organization was instrumental in the formulation and promotion of national objectives that despite tactical and occasional strategic shifts consistently demanded an independent state from the early 1970s on. The PLO has played a decisive role in providing the movement for Palestinian self-determination with symbolic objects, motifs, and ideas: a Palestinian martyrology, a flag, national slogans, military training and insignia, works of poetry and visual arts. Moreover, PLO acts of resistance have become powerful symbols in a national mythology. The battle of Karameh, for example, became a symbol of courage—the PLO's prestige soared in March 1968 after its forces managed to resist the Israeli Army, inflicting heavy losses on crack units that raided a base in an East Bank refugee camp. Black September, despite and perhaps because of the defeat and elimination of the PLO presence in Jordan, became another symbol of Palestinian resistance in the face of persecution. To these actions were added the activities of hijacking units, especially the as-

12

The Background

siduous work of Leila Haled. Yasir Arafat encouraged the development of sumud—he stated in early 1973 that "merely holding out for a day is a small victory. The PLO ensured that at least symbolic outlets for action appeared in the form of demonstrations, protests, and civil disobedience. Military defeats in Lebanon in 1978 and even more so in 1982 were used to boost Palestinian morale; the former was called "the second Karameh," and in the latter instance Arafat pointed out that the PLO resisted Israel longer than did the Arab regular forces in 1967. Effective or not, the PLO has displayed the most popular organized action on behalf of the Palestinian cause. These actions by the PLO, both symbolic and otherwise, mark its claim to the role of legitimate representative of the Palestinian nation. Ratification of this role came in several ways: the decisive resolution of the March 1974 Rabat summit in which Jordanian claims to represent the Palestinians were flatly denied by leaders of the Arab nations, while the PLO's claim was formally approved; the spectacular (from the Palestinian point of view) appearance of Yasir Arafat in the United Nations General Assembly in the same year; the gradual penetration of the PLO into the United Nations and other international organizations; and the sweeping victory of PLO-supported candidates in the West Bank municipal elections of 1976. Finally, the PLO has gained influence through its organizational and mobilization apparatus. The political, military, economic, and propaganda machinery put to work by the PLO enabled it to effectively penetrate and participate in the development of the national institutional infrastructure of the West Bank. The PLO and its front organizations have been active in all social, economic, and cultural developments. In this sense the PLO has not only contributed to Palestinian nation building—it also has infused that effort with a secular and modernizing orientation. Whether or not the role of the PLO was justified by its actual achievements, the PLO has offered hope, self-respect, and a sense of future to a population that regarded itself as impotent and abused by occupation, neglected by the Arab states, and irrelevant to the world.

Exposure to the World The interest in the Middle East expressed by foreign politicians, the media, international organizations, and revolutionary movements has played a significant role in leading Palestinians to define and clarify their political positions. Thus, in a 1978 television appearance in the United States, Yasir Arafat stated that "I offered a secular democratic state, but they said we wanted to demolish and destroy Israel. We put it aside and said we will establish our

Communications and Nation Building

13

independent state in any part of Palestine."45 Exposure to the world and the need to win understanding and sympathy have forced Palestinians to make clear-cut resolutions, as illustrated by the consensus of major Palestinian organizations on the following points: • Palestinians constitute one people with a defined national and cultural identity. • This identity is intimately and inextricably connected to the land of Palestine. • Palestinians have a legitimate right to a national state. • Palestinians have the right to representation by leaders of their own choice, namely, the PLO.46 A second aspect of this trend toward formulating a national identity has been the need to activate mechanisms for dissemination of nation-building concepts. The West Bank press has been instrumental in this task, inasmuch as Israeli censorship and other constraints have allowed. The publication of an English weekly edition of the pro-PLO M-Fajar (The Dawn) can be seen in this perspective. Likewise, the Palestinian Press Service has been established, probably under PLO auspices, with the explicit objectives of providing the world's media with the Palestinian version of events and of guiding overseas visitors on fact-finding missions. An entire range of academic, political, and literary journals, such as Al-Fajar-al-Adabi (The Literary Dawn), the Journal of Palestine Studies, publications of the Palestine Research Center (active in Beirut until the 1982 war), Freedomways, the MERIP Reports, and New Middle East, published by Palestinians and their sympathizers are another facet of this exposure and its effects.

Nation-building

Dilenvmts

Finally, the dialectic process in the search for identity and institutional change should be considered as another force at work in Palestinian nation building. Differences in outlook between the old Hashemite-supported and the newer pro-PLO leadership, between the PLO and local organizations, Communists and religious fundamentalists, rightists and leftists, moderates and radicals may be seen in the framework of classic dilemmas in achieving consensus about sensitive nation-building issues. Tradition versus modernity, continuity versus change, indigenous values versus foreign influences, essentialism—the inherited course—versus epochalism—moving with the present—religious versus secular orientations, revolution versus evolution—all have been used to describe such dilemmas in the literature of development.47 In the Palestinian case they refer mainly to pan-Arab and pan-Islamic allegiances vis-à-vis a local Palestinian identity and affinity with

14

The Background

tradition versus a basic acceptance of modernization. The fact that a majority among West Bank residents has apparently opted for the local brand of identity does not mean that the choice has b e e n easy. Not only have the Palestinians lacked support from Arab politicians for their separatist aspirations, but the religious Islamic dimension of national allegiances in the Arab world has made the definition of Palestinian nationality a very difficult task. This has had considerable bearing on the Palestinian version of the tradition/modernity and the evolution/revolution dilemmas. A search for symbols, values, and traditions typical of the West Bank has been occurring along with the willing acceptance of modernization, largely as a result of Palestinian links with Israel. The adoption of sumtid as a sociopsychological conflict-resolving mechanism has not b e e n effective in reducing the incompatibilities between nation-building objectives, although it has been influential in easing the uncomfortable need to accept the Israeli presence. This influence has been achieved by separating acceptance of Israel as a modernizing catalyst from compliance with occupation. Thus, sumud has helped ease the pressures of the evolution/revolution dilemma by promoting a typical Palestinian brand of "evolutionary revolution." These dilemmas and their derivatives, such as the role of women in Palestinian nation building or the resistance to occupation as a mobility channel for lower status groups, are important components of the social processes that have b e e n taking place in the West Bank. Unsolved dilemmas and internal disagreement represent forces that cannot be overlooked in any attempt to understand the maturation of Palestinian nation building.

The Role of Communications Communications may b e considered as having two functions in nationbuilding processes: reporting the events and playing a role in shaping them. Both have b e e n subjects of considerable concern in research and practice.

Reporting the Events T h e importance of day-by-day, and often hour-by-hour reportage on the Middle East, especially in the case of the West Bank, has increasingly b e c o m e apparent in recent years. Extensive media coverage has served to report frequent eruption of hostilities, surprising acts of guerrilla warfare ( o r terrorism, according to one's interpretation), astonishing Israeli reprisals, peace initiatives, and different facets of life under occupation. Much of this coverage has consisted of descriptive reporting of particular events rather than analysis of the entire process of Palestinian nation

Communications and Nation Building

15

building. In other words, the political-demonstrative content of the process has been given priority over its other components. Even in this sense, press, radio, and television usually have not conveyed a full and accurate portrayal of reality in the West Bank. This inaccuracy is not really the result of "taking sides" as much as it is a function of the exaggerated emphasis given to conflict and drama. Reports in local and international media have typically consisted of a loosely interconnected flow of action-loaded, time- (or space-) compressed episodes that are perceived, produced, and presented in much the same decontextualized fashion as is the usual coverage given the nonWestern world.48 This brand of reportage presents particular events via the structure, vocabulary, syntax, and punctuation of the prevailing media language and places a resultant emphasis on the most stereotypical features of those events. It is easier to report hide-and-seek "games" between Israeli reservists and Palestinian teenagers throwing stones at Dheisheh refugee camp than it is to discuss community programs in Bir Zayt University; it is more attractive to show striking businesses in West Bank cities than to analyze the development of sumud\ and it is more profitable—in both financial and professional terms—to describe bloody vendettas between Jewish settlers and Arab villagers than to portray a growing institutional infrastructure. Thus, reality is reflected in terms of an international media culture. In addition, this type of coverage has been encouraged by the nature of the events and the relationships among their protagonists. However proudly Israelis may describe the occupation of the West Bank as the most liberal in history, an atmosphere of suspicion and limited freedom prevails with respect to information. "Official channels alone can never make good copy" has been a constant motto in the relations between foreign journalists and the Israeli authorities. Journalists have tended therefore to look for the other side of the story to a degree even beyond that required by professional norms. The London Sunday Times Insight Team, for example, published a four-page article in June 1977 under the title "Israel and Torture." It concluded on the basis of a five-month investigation that "torture of Arab prisoners is so widespread and systematic that it cannot be dismissed as 'rogue cops' exceeding orders. It appears to be sanctioned as deliberate policy."'" Although the Sunday Times informed the Israeli authorities of the article's imminent publication, the newspaper withheld the article's details. Thus, the government did not get the opportunity to investigate and deny the charges on a case-by-case basis until after publication. In addition to postpublication official denials by the Israeli Embassy in London, published by the Times and by the Israeli attorney-general in a Jerusalem press briefing, a Jerusalem Post team conducted a detailed investigation. Their findings, also published in a series of articles, were that the Insight Team relied almost exclusively on the testimony of two Israeli lawyers of the same political persuasion; that they deliberately omitted information from Israeli

16

The Background

sources who had firsthand knowledge of the issues under discussion; that Insight's information was based on unchecked stories and unverified rumors; and that consequently the main charge of deliberate and systematic torture was not validated by the available facts. 50 In support of this conclusion the then head of the Red Cross International Committee in Israel was quoted as saying that "I cannot give a clean bill of health to the Israeli authorities. We do not have access to places where the captives are detained before t r i a l . . . . But systematic torture, authorized and approved by the Israeli administration—no, I do not believe that exists. We have no evidence of that."51 This case illustrated the tendency among outside observers to make a priori judgments based on general perceptions of Israel and on the relationship between Israeli authorities and the world media. A second type of problem in this area comes from the Palestinian side. The PLO's need to mobilize internal consciousness, external support, and overall legitimacy under adverse circumstances and the vary nature of the organization explain in part the priority given to the political-demonstrative element in PLO relations with the media. A leading Palestinian journalist remarked that "with us, literature and ideology and history and politics c o m e together. We cannot separate. Oppressed nations do not sing as a bird on a branch. They sing as birds in a cage.'"12 Organizations such as the Palestine Press Service have managed to provide correspondents and editorial rooms thousands of miles away with materials in demand, usually translated into Western languages and sometimes in the form of ready-made "instant copy."" This trend is in many ways compatible with Clifford Geertz's "morning after" theory of Third World development.^ He suggested that leaderships prefer to emphasize collective integration regarding emotional issues rather than deal with acute economic and social problems. The former is less complicated, and leaders are better acquainted with it, whereas the latter demands unpopular and sometimes unattainable solutions. These problems are usually put aside to be dealt with at a later, often unspecified stage, and this neglect results in extreme difficulty after the euphoria of liberation has passed. Even when there has been some awareness of other problems, pressures have mounted in the West Bank to focus on the politicaldemonstrative issues. In the summer of 1983 the Neve Tzedek Center in Tel Aviv presented a "Week of Palestinian Art," a program designed to expose Israelis and others to the cultural life of the West Bank. Palestinian theatrical groups and artists presented their works and met informally with basically sympathetic audiences. The final event, an open dialogue between Israeli and Palestinian writers and poets, was almost cancelled at the last moment, after the audie n c e had already filled the house. Although a delicate agreement had b e e n reached beforehand specifying that only cultural aspects of Palestinian and Israeli literature would b e discussed, the Palestinian participants demanded

Communications and Nation Building

17

that a joint political statement be issued. In private, some confided that it could be dangerous for them to go home after having spent time with the enemy without producing some tangible political-demonstrative gain." This symbiotic relationship among the attitudes and methods of the media, the Israeli authorities, and the Palestinians as well as the very nature of the situation have obscured the role of communications in areas that do not directly pertain to the political-demonstrative domain. The internal development of national consciousness, cultural symbols and mechanisms, an institutional infrastructure, or socioeconomic change have attracted media attention and academic interest to a lesser degree, although their importance in Palestinian nation building has been well recognized.

The Functions of Communications in Nation Building Communications permeate processes of nation building almost by definition. At the macro level, communications perform essential functions in enhancing public awareness, empathy, and mobilization. Mohandas Gandhi, Mao Zedong, Fidel Castro, and Ayatollah Khomeini made extensive use of communications in this context. 56 At a narrower level, evidence suggests the importance of communications in satisfying individual and community needs for information, emotional support, integration, cultural continuity, and psychological escape. These needs tend to increase with the uncertainty of social change and are magnified greatly in revolutionary circumstances.57 These needs are not satisfied by the modern media alone. The performance of the mass media, notably the press and broadcasting, has not been as expected. 5 " Katz and Wedell have argued that this failure is a result of the incompatibility of Western media models and Third World experience as well as the faulty application of those models. 59 The more radically oriented media critics contended that the introduction of the mass media in developing countries was intended from the outset to serve a conspiracy of foreign interests.60 Moreover, many of those who put their faith in the role of modern media in promoting or preventing revolution paid a high price for the mistaken perception that revolution means capturing the local radio station or preventing its capture. In short, most communications research and practical experience indicate that the belief in the omnipotent powers of modern media is obsolete. Patricia Fagen has argued that one of the reasons for Salvador Allende's downfall in Chile was his refusal, or inability, to nationalize the media, which later played a major role in undermining his socialist government's rule.61 Although this argument was not totally out of order, given the high level of media participation in the politics of pre-Pinochet Chile, one wonders whether it was not blown out of proportion. It overemphasized the role of

18

The Background

the mass media as compared with such forces as the U.S.-supported opposition, military and economic pressure, and internal strife. In contrast, Sylvia Moore noted that especially in politically repressive regimes where modern media are owned and controlled by government officials, or wealthy landowners and industrialists, live performance is one of the few channels open for political expression, historical consciousness, the assertion of group identity and the source of alternative information—the people's newspaper. It is one of the channels most hated and perhaps feared by dictators. General Viola of Argentina declared that "theater, film and music together form the most powerful weapon in the hands of subversive elements. Protest songs have played an active role in creating a climate of subversion."6-'

Ayatollah Khomeini made spectacular use of traditional systems and small media in the Iranian revolution. By relying upon a solid institutional infrastructure and by activating highly information-conductive channels, the revolutionary communications network was able to achieve superiority over the government-controlled, technologically advanced mass media system in terms of penetration, credibility, and activation. Khomeini was provided with a powerful alternative system by the existing religious, communal, and artistic folk media." 1 Modern media were rejected by the Iranian masses, who saw the media as part of an unacceptable symbolic world. In contrast, the revolutionary network was organically integrated into the realities and symbols of daily life, and its reliability was unquestioned. The surprise expressed in Iran and in the world at the shattering of the "myth of the mighty media," along with the collapse of the entire system, was followed by the recognition that policymakers, journalists, and researchers had been excessively imbued with Western ethnocentrism. O n e conclusion to be drawn from the Iranian case is that the effectiveness of any communications system depends on its institutional and cultural linkages in a given society. 64 Faulty linkages were the crucial intervening variable in the contradiction between the control and functioning of mass communications in prerevolutionary Iran. Following the shah's modernizing vision, Iranian mass media embarked, under tight governmental control and with lavish resources, on a course that emphasized an attitude of epochalism. (This term, coined by Clifford Geertz, indicates ideological, technological, economic, and cultural external influences.) This course did not satisfy the mass need for essentialist values—in this case, the inherited course of Islamic traditions and symbols. 65 As a result, effective control was not translated into effective functioning. Khomeini, on the other hand, understood and managed to devise communications mechanisms that were institutionally and culturally compatible with the satisfaction of such needs. 6 6

Communications and Nation Building

19

Policymaking and academic attentions to nation building and social change in general, including the Palestinian case, demand a detailed knowledge of communication processes and their institutional linkages. Research, evaluation, and the use of communications imply more than simply analyzing the role of the mass media. A broader approach is necessary, one that looks at the communication functions performed by both modern, specialized channels and indigenous institutions. Such an approach requires knowledge about the existence and operation of mechanisms through which opinions, attitudes, and behaviors are expressed, information is disseminated, collective feelings and identities are shaped, symbols are created and shared by large audiences, and control is exercised. The present volume is an effort to apply this approach in order to identify the role of communications in Palestinian nation building in the context of the cultural, political, and social changes in the Middle East. This book charts the manifest and latent, official and alternative, modern and traditional communications systems in the West Bank. This charting process seeks to answer the following questions: 1. What are the communications media, channels, and networks active in the West Bank? What are their structure and character? What professional, technical, organizational, financial, and symbolic resources are available to them? How are they activated? Who are their operators and clients? What is the extent of their penetration and credibility? 2. What is the nature of the existing controlling mechanisms, especially those mechanisms designed to filter, select, and block information? How effective are those mechanisms? 3- What are the functions of different communication networks in the Palestinian nation-building process? What are their structural and institutional linkages? This book analyzes these questions; it does not seek to explain the evolution of Palestinian nation building, or to assess causal relationships underlying its manifestations. The latter topics have been investigated in other works, some of which have been cited in the following chapters. The characteristics of Palestinian nation building are discussed in detail throughout the book, with particular reference to the interaction among colonial rule, Jordanian annexation, Israeli occupation, Arab-Islamic tradition, and socioeconomic modernization, both among themselves and with a developing local consciousness and identity, expressed in symbols, institutions, and behaviors. These characteristics have been viewed here as the political, cultural, and organizational contexts that affect and are affected by various types of communication networks. The historical depth and mutual relationship of these contextual variables are thus determined and analyzed

20

The Background

according to their relevance to the structure, operation, and control of communication networks. In addition to providing academic knowledge on a subject that has scarcely b e e n investigated, the materials in this volume may be of value to the Palestinians and to other interested participants/observers of Palestinian nation building in their policymaking evaluations and choices. From the Israeli perspective, the data presented herein may have bearing on an assessment of the effectiveness of attempts to curb Palestinian communications. Palestinians may benefit from these data in evaluating the development of their communication systems, not only in the political-demonstrative dimension, but also in other equally important aspects of nation building. The international community may use the materials assembled here as resources to facilitate realistic appraisals, expectations, and decisions on the Palestine problem. This may prevent a repetition of the surprise and frustration caused by the events in Iran; in the Iranian case the international community was unaware of the power of Khomeini's religious and folk media. Finally, it is expected that the investigation of the ways in which communication networks reflect, affect, and are influenced by nation-building processes and dilemmas makes a contribution to the theory and practice of social change. This investigation may b e of interest to those involved in communications and nation building because communications touch upon a sizable set of related aspects: cultural continuity and change, autonomy and dependence, mobilization and organization, technology and resource management, tradition, symbols, attitudes, and behavioral patterns. Moreover, the Palestinian case differs from Iran, where all conclusions were reached after the decisive stages of the process, and from other cases, such as Portugal, Nicaragua, or Poland, where no systematic research was conducted on these problems. The West Bank is still undergoing the revolutionary process, thereby allowing o n e to analyze the factors at play during the course of events and to draw conclusions based on a concrete reality, instead of engaging in postfactum reconstructions and interpretations.

2

A Sociopolitical Overview of the West Bank

Historical Background: A Crossroads of Power, Culture, and Religion The history of the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea has been largely determined by a blend of power, culture, and religion.1 Politically, this region has been in the grip of an almost uninterrupted dependence on foreign powers, and its function has been as a strategic crossroads between them. The establishment, progress, and stagnation of the region's states and kingdoms, which were inhabited by a variety of nations— such as the Hyksos, the Kassites, and the Hittites; Aramaic and Canaanite tribes; Phoenicians and Philistines; Jews and Arabs—were usually determined by stronger powers, including Egypt and Mesopotamia in the second millenium B.C.; Assyria, Babylon, Greece, and Persia in the first millenium B.C.; Rome and Byzantium during some six centuries beginning in 63 B.C.; Muslim Arabs between the seventh and the fourteenth centuries (with a twohundred-year interruption by the Crusaders); the Ottoman Empire between 1570 and 1918, followed later in the twentieth century by Britain, France, and other European colonialists, and, finally, by the modern superpowers. An independent Jewish state existed in the early years of the first millenium—between 1004 and 923 B.C.—under kings Saul, David, and Solomon. Saul established the kingdom; David captured Jerusalem, made it the kingdom's capital, and set up a small empire in the area between the Arabian Desert, in the East, the Red Sea and the Sinai peninsula in the South, and the Euphrates River in the north. King Solomon built the temple and developed Jerusalem into an administrative and religious center. After 923 B.C. the kingdom was divided by his rivaling heirs into the northern kingdom of Israel, in Samaria, and the southern kingdom ofJudea, with Nablus and Jerusalem 21

22

The Background

serving as their respective capitals. The northern kingdom was destroyed by Assyria in 722 B.C. and the southern by Babylonian armies in 586 B.C. Although this historical episode had little political importance, it was crucial for the cultural and political consolidation of the first monotheistic religion, as established by its founding fathers—Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The adoption of the Bible and of the ethic principles ofJudaism, first by Christianity and later by Islam, has awarded utmost religious and cultural importance to the region in which the West Bank is located, perhaps as a spiritual compensation for an almost permanent state of political upheaval. Most attempts to establish political independence in the area were characterized by confrontations between emotional, conflicting religious beliefs rather than by more secular power struggles. Palestinian nation building largely developed out of this background. The first signs of Palestinian national consciousness appeared among Arabic-speaking inhabitants of Palestine in the second half of the nineteenth century, mostly in Jerusalem, Nablus, and Hebron in the West Bank as well as in Haifa and Gaza. Based on the Muslim and Christian attachment to the holy places centered in Jerusalem, the sense of Palestinian territorial identity emerged as a spiritual, intellectual, and political reaction to the JewishZionist immigration and settlement of the area. The Zionist threat implied both modernization and the emergence of an "alien" religious and national entity in Palestine. It was perceived, in addition, as a challenge to the political hegemony of the Muslim elite, the social order of traditional Arab society, and the economic options of the Muslim and Christian middle class. In short, Jewish nationalism posed a threat to the prevailing religious-politicaleconomic order. An Arabic-speaking front was thus formed to promote the concepts of a secular territorial patriotism and of a common Arab cultural heritage. As long as Ottoman rule lasted (until 1917), the idea of Palestinian nationalism did not attract the Muslim elite in the region. Allegiance to a Muslim sultan and a vested interest in the Ottoman Empire (members of aristocratic families held prominent positions in the Ottoman administration) explain the elite's support for the Turkish rulers. The collapse of the empire following World War I and the sympathetic attitude of the British Mandatory Government toward the Zionist movement—at least as perceived by Palestinian-Arab militants who opposed the Jewish home approved in the Balfour Declaration—contributed to the development of a strong Palestinian national awareness. After a short period of nonviolent demands for the annulment of the Balfour Declaration, the Palestinian national movement split into two major streams. Local notables, such as the Nashashibis, the Dajanis, and others, who reflected the family-based social structure, continued to conduct political action. Yet their moderate positions and organizational fragmentation made them vulnerable to more militant

Sociopolitical Overview

23

figures, such as some members of the formerly moderate Husseini family, especially Haj Amin al-Husseini, the mufti (religious leader) of Jerusalem. With the Supreme Muslim Council and the Arab Higher Committee serving him as religious and political power bases, Haj Amin did not hesitate to employ intimidation and violence against his opponents, be they Brits, Jews, or moderate Arabs. Violence reached its peak between 1936 and 1939 when a mufti-inspired general strike turned into a full-scale anti-British, anti-Jewish armed revolt, which was crushed by the British Army and by civilian groups. The rejection by Arab countries and by Palestinian activists of concessions offered by the British in a 1937 partition proposal and in a 1939 white paper, the fragmentation of the nationalist movement, and the failure to consolidate any significant achievements after World War II resulted in a slowdown for Palestinian nation building. Control was consequently transferred from Palestinian to Arab League hands, which enhanced political-military escalation and led to the 1948 war and to its complex aftermath. The Jordanization of the West Bank following the 1948 war and the subsequent appearance of Gamal Abdel Nasser as a pan-Arab leader weakened Palestinian nationalism even more during the 1960s. Nationalist attitudes reemerged after the 1967 occupation, particularly after the 1973 war, and gathered momentum afterward under the influence of PLO supporters in the West Bank.

Geographic Conditions: Between Mountain and Desert The West Bank is located in the very heart of the Fertile Crescent between Iraq and Egypt, which includes most of the area suitable for human settlement in the region.2 Judea, the part of Palestine allocated in biblical times to the Hebrew tribe of Judah, occupies the largest part of the area—3,800 square kilometers (km 2 ) from the plain of Beer Sheva in the south to the town of al-Birah, near Ramallah, in the north. The main north-south highway in the Judea hills runs near the watershed, with large population concentrations in the areas ofJerusalem, Hebron, Bethlehem, and Ramallah (see Figure 2.1). Jerusalem is the most important crossroads in the region with highways going eastward to Jericho and the Jordan valley and westward to the coastal plain. The western mountainous part of Judea is more fertile than the desert in the east, with levels of precipitation varying from an annual average of 700-1,000 millimeters (mm) in the hills to 100-200 mm in the desert. The Jordan River and two oases—Jericho and Ein Gedi—are additional important water sources. Altitude constitutes another element of variation, with the highest point

24

The Background

LEBANON

GOLAN

ISRAEL AND THE OCCUPIED TERRITORIES Haifa,

Mediterranean

SYRIA

Lake\ Tiberias,

\

Sea fflliit Tulkarm

TERRITORIES CAPTURED BY ISRAEL IN THE 1967 WAR

'Nablus

Tel Avi Ramallah"

Jordan River WEST BANK

lericho

Amman

Bethlehi

GAZA^y

STRIP

Beer Sheva •El Arish

ISRAEL

EGYPT (Sinai)

Eilat\ «rf. Akaba

Red/ (Sea SAUDI ARABIA" Figure 2.1

Israel and the Occupied Territories

JORDAN (East Bank)

Sociopolitical Overview

25

at about 1,000 meters above sea level in the Hebron region, and the lowest, some 50 kilometers away, at the Dead Sea, which is 400 meters (m) below sea level. The mountains of Samaria, which occupy an area of 2,200 km 2 , continue thejudea hills to the north. The eastern slopes of the mountains resemble the Judea desert in the small amount of cultivated land and the sparse population. The additional geographical borders of the Samaria region are the Gilboa and Carmel mountain ranges in the west, the valleys of Jezreel and Beth-Shan in the north, and the Jordan valley in the east. Higher precipitation levels and better highways make Samaria more comfortable than Judea for the cultivation of agricultural land. Although Nablus, the major city in the area, is located at a more convenient crossroads than is Jerusalem, its status has always been lower, given the city's inferior strategic position in the valley created by Mounts Gerizim and Ebal; this geographic position has traditionally prevented Nablus from becoming a military stronghold. The Jordan valley is the third geographical component of the region, in addition to Judea and Samaria. Running from south Lebanon to the Red Sea, the valley is a small segment of the Syrian-African rift, which starts in Turkey and goes southward to the big East African lakes and the Zambezie River in southern Africa. The part included in the West Bank begins in the Beth Shan valley in the north. As the valley continues southward, it becomes narrower, with some 1-2 kms of width until it reaches the Jericho region where it gets wider again, to a maximum of 23 kms, of which 10 km are desert. The 300 km 2 included on the northwestern quarter of the Dead Sea constitute the southern part of the West Bank.

Demography: Fiiend or Foe? The population of the West Bank was estimated in 1983 at 767,000, not including Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem's 120,000 residents. 3 The geodemographic population distribution can be estimated as follows:4 • In the Hebron district: 267,000 inhabitants, including an urban population in Hebron (60,000) and other towns of 117,000, a refugee camps population of 10,000; and a rural population of 150,000 located in some 80 villages. • In the Bethlehem district: 125,000 inhabitants, including 50,000 in Bethlehem, 2 additional towns, and 3 refugee camps (a-Dheisheh, 6,000; al-Uahada and Aza, 4,000), and 75,000 in some 50 rural villages. • In the Jordan district: 25,000 inhabitants, including some camps and a 10,000 rural population.

26

The Background

• In the Ramallah district: 80,000 inhabitants, including 55,000 urban population in Ramallah, al-Birah, and adjacent refugee camps; and 25,000 rural population. • In the northern district (Nablus, Jenin, Tulkarm, Kalkilya): 265,000 inhabitants, including 150,000 urban population, the major part of which ( 9 0 , 0 0 0 ) live in Nablus, and 115,000 rural population in some 200 villages. Changes in the size and composition of the population have occurred as a result of internal and external demographic processes. The former include a steady average birthrate of 45 per thousand, which remained almost unchanged during the fifty years preceding 1983 and accounted for an annual increase of 30,000 between 1974 and 1983. Infant mortality decreased from 15 percent in 1966 to 10 percent in the mid-1970s and to 7 percent in the early 1980s. Immigration has had a decisive impact in determining demographic processes. Two processes were typical of the pre-1948 period during the British Mandate. Immigrants arrived from the neighboring Arab countries, and residents of the hilly areas emigrated to the coastal plain. During the 1948-1949 hostilities, 250,000 refugees left the area occupied by Israel and went to the eastern bank of the Jordan. During the 1949-1967 period of Jordanian rule of the West Bank, emigration reached high rates— 2.5 percent annually, which was almost equivalent to the rate of natural growth. A total o f 4 0 0 , 0 0 0 West Bank residents emigrated during those years, the majority to the East Bank Hashemite kingdom and some to the Arab oil countries. After the 1967 war about one-fifth of the West Bank population, s o m e 215,000 people, emigrated eastward. The process declined between 1969 and 1974 to its lowest point in twenty years—some 14,000 emigrants—but rose again after 1975. In 1981 almost three-fourths of the natural population growth was cancelled out by emigration. The number of people leaving the West Bank between 1968-1983 was 147,000 or 45 percent of the natural growth. Since 1982, however, the emigration level has declined; in 1984 the first positive balance since 1973 was achieved. 5 Thus, during 1975-1980 the rate of emigration from the West Bank to Arab countries was 17 per thousand. This rate declined to 9 per thousand in 1981 and to 3 per thousand in 1983. Emigration has been influenced by socioeconomic as well as political factors. A high tendency to emigrate exists among Palestinian high school and college graduates due to a lack of adequate employment. In the early 1980s some 9,000 students graduated annually from West Bank high schools and s o m e 1,500 from higher education institutions. Another 1,000 graduates return annually to the West Bank after having completed their studies in universities abroad. The small demand for workers in the Israeli administration; the freeze

Sociopolitical Overview

27

in the development of the West Bank's financial and administrative sectors; and the closure of the Israeli economy to West Bank white-collar workers have reduced the number of West Bank positions available for this (youth) labor force to no more than one thousand jobs annually. Thus, only about 20 percent of such applicants find jobs every year, while the others emigrate or find blue-collar jobs. Only 27 percent of the men and 40 percent of the women who were 10-24 years of age in 1961 were living in the West Bank in 1983- Of those who were 10-21 years of age in 1967,70 percent of the men and 50 percent of the women emigrated from the West Bank. Urbanization is the second most remarkable demographic process in the West Bank. Urban populations have been growing, notwithstanding a land distribution of approximately 210 km2 to dwelling areas and roads and 2,000 km2 to farming and a traditional 70 percent rural and suburban-30 percent urban population distribution.6 Construction is a good indicator of this growth. The total area occupied by buildings in Hebron, for example, has grown from 7,000 dunams (1 dunam = 1 km 2 ) in 1967, about 9 5 percent of the total 73,000 dunams included in the municipal area, to more than 20,000 dunams in 1983, some 27 percent of the total area. The built-up area of Bethjalla grew between 1969 and 1979 by 55 percent, al-Birah by 67 percent, Beth Sahour by 267 percent, and Bethlehem by 125 percent. Nevertheless, population density is low, as indicated by the combined average density for the big cities—3 persons per dunam—calculated by dividing the 270,000 population by the 90,000 dunams they occupy. This factor creates obstacles in the supply of municipal services and hinders the planning of effective infrastructures. Tension between particular interests and rational planning has hindered so far the activity of local and regional planning authorities. Assuming an emigration rate similar to 1975-1981, demographic forecasts predict a 1 percent annual population growth and a population of 850,000 by 1995- Assuming a lower emigration rate (such as in 1982-1984), the population of the West Bank in the mid-1990s is expected to reach 1.2 million. The demographic relationship between Jews and Arabs in the area remained almost unchanged in the 1967-1983 period. In 1967 the total population living within the borders of former British Mandatory Palestine—comprising Israel and the occupied territories—was 3,473,000, with 2,384,000 Jews (63.7 percent) and 1,358,000 Arabs (36.3 percent). In 1983 the 5,408,000 total population featured a similar relationship, with 3,436,000 Jews (635 percent) and 1,972,000 Arabs (36.5 percent).

Economy: The Dynamics of Dependence Economic underdevelopment and dependence have been the major characteristics of the West Bank economy in the past decades.7 Prior to 1948 the

28

The Background

British Mandatorial Government and Jewish entrepreneurs preferred to develop an economic infrastructure in the coastal plain of Palestine, which did not change the predominantly agrarian character of the West Bank. The West Bank's annexation to Jordan in the early 1950s did not improve the situation. In addition to turning thousands of families into refugees and causing the loss of thousands of jobs, the 1948 war cut off the West Bank from the more developed parts of the area, from its major markets, and from access to the sea. The Jordanian government was said to be interested in developing the West Bank as no more than "the vegetable garden of the kingdom."8 According to Jordanian economic plans, the West Bank economy was to be limited to the agricultural sector. Industrial investments were directed to the eastern part of the kingdom; there were only five factories in the entire West Bank.9 Tourism was the only prosperous sector in the Jordanian-controlled West Bank. By taking advantage of the numerous holy places and other Christian and Muslim sites of interest, the small capital investment needed, and the relatively inexpensive labor force, this sector, together with the moneys sent to the West Bank by emigrants and other Palestinian expatriates, enabled the economy to survive. In 1967 the Israelis found the West Bank to be a relatively underdeveloped economy whose major product was cheap labor. The meeting between the underdeveloped West Bank and the progressive Israeli economy had one major consequence. From 1972 on, the West Bank became one of Israel's most important export markets, in size second only to the United States. Since 1974 a more or less stable 12 percent of all Israeli exports has gone to the West Bank; Israeli products comprised 91 percent of all West Bank and Gaza Strip imports in 1977. No reciprocal trade processes occurred. Although Moshe Dayan's "open bridges" policy allowed the export of West Bank agricultural produce across the Jordan bridges to other Middle Eastern markets, labor continued to be the major West Bank export product. Legions of workers—50,000 in 1983—were quickly absorbed into service work and unskilled blue-collar jobs in Israel; these workers represented 27 percent of Israel's Gross National Product (GNP) in 1974 and made up some 8 percent of Israel's labor force. Since then some changes have been observed in Israeli-West Bank economic relations, with some agricultural and industrial products beginning to make their way from the West Bank to Israel. The economy began to grow more rapidly, reaching a 13 percent annual rate in the mid-1970s. This rate of growth declined in later years to 6 percent, following developments such as the recession after the 1973 war; the stabilization of the West Bank labor force in Israel; the low share of savings used for development investments; the weakening of the West Bank's only relative advantage—cheap labor—caused by rising salaries; and the reduction in the labor force due to increased emigration during 1975-1978.

Sociopolitical Overview

29

Israeli occupation did not change the basic dependence pattern typical of the West Bank economy. Although ties with Israel contributed to considerable economic growth, and some technological innovation was absorbed by the region's agriculture and industry, the economy did not experience fundamental changes. This was mainly due to the lack of capital investment, which is a historically characteristic obstacle to the expansion of the area's economy, together with the emigration of potential managers and skilled workers. This situation has encouraged the development of a consumption economy in the West Bank financed by foreign resources provided by workers in foreign economies. Private and family- or hamula (extended family) -based consumption, including investment in related services, has been typical of this economy. Thus, construction constitutes a major expenditure. Whereas 79,000 square meters (m 2 ) of new construction were registered in 1968, this number expanded in 1983 to 673,000 m2. The amount of construction for public needs, however, has been small and decreasing, comprising 9 5 percent of all construction starts in 1971,0.9 percent in 1975, and none in 19821983. Most construction took place in the framework of hamula efforts, which were a continuation of traditional dwelling patterns that have not allowed for modern planning. This type of construction enhanced a disordered urban development. Household appliances constitute a second major item in the West Bank consumption economy, and their presence in Palestinian homes illustrates significant improvements in the standard of living. In 1983,60 percent of the households had electric refrigerators as compared with 13.8 percent in 1972. Within the same decade the number of households with television sets increased from 10 percent to 75 percent, of which 8.4 percent were color sets. A third and final example concerns transportation. The number of automobiles in the West Bank increased from 2,974 in 1967 to 38,609 in 1983, a twelvefold increase. The number of registered drivers increased from 3,711 in 1970 to 42,200 in 1983- Most of the investments in this area were production oriented, with a significant growth in the number of productionoriented (trucks, pick-ups, and so on) vehicles. The amount of public expenditure went up during 1967- 1983 in absolute terms, but it remained lower than for private expenditure. The former reached 2,190 million old Israeli shekels ($44 million) in 1983, a much lower sum than the 19,260 million ($385 million) spent for the latter. Public expenditures, however, grew steadily and reached some 35 percent total growth between 1968 and 1972. A budgetary deficit accompanied this growth and was covered by the military government. At the same time, authorities made special efforts to increase tax collection in the West Bank. The

30

The Background

prevailing hamula structure led the authorities to emphasize the collection of indirect rather than direct taxes. Thus, in 1972-1973 direct taxes constituted 8.1 percent and indirect taxes 81.4 percent of all revenue. An exception to this policy has been the firm stand of the government with respect to the collection of value added tax (VAT), which involved a political confrontation with the Palestinian population. In the early 1980s the West Bank economy almost came to a halt. In 1981-1982 the economical growth (at market prices) decreased by 0.3 percent, in contrast with an annual 6 percent increase between 1976 and 1980 and 4 percent between 1980 and 1982. The emigration rate declined; and unemployment was felt in the West Bank, although Israel still offered work to West Bank residents. Private consumption and investments in production decreased. According to Israeli experts, the political situation in the area, the weaknesses of the economies of both Israeli and Arab countries, and the lack of Palestinian nationwide economic organizations capable of mobilizing resources and coordinating priorities may prevent significant economic growth in the latter part of the 1980s. Different views are held by Palestinian nationalist economists. Hisham Awartani, who assigns a major role to the agricultural and agroindustrial sector in the development of the West Bank economy, argues for rational planning of resource deployment and utilization, especially land, water, labor, and marketing, in order to achieve five major goals: expanding food production to cope with the population increase expected if a Palestinian state were to be established; alleviating certain forms of malnutrition; correcting the West Bank trade imbalance with Israel; maintaining the West Bank's position as an important food supplier to other countries in the Middle East; and absorbing larger numbers of workers while increasing productivity. Awartani recommends the cultivation of hilly terrain farming, irrigated vegetable crops, field and citrus crops, and pastures, the raising of livestock and poultry, and the creation of a viable agricultural infrastructure as means for developing the West Bank economy. Infrastructural development includes training extension workers, programs of adaptive research, agricultural education and organization (in cooperatives, for example), the establishment of an efficient credit system, adequate marketing techniques, controlled land fragmentation, and the provision of transportation networks.10 The slow negotiations between West Bank "financial activists" and the Israeli government regarding the establishment of a Palestinian bank indicate that the Palestinian community is aware of its most basic economic problem, the lack of capital investment. Meanwhile, a "united Palestinian appeal" has been active in the United States since 1980. Tailored after the United Jewish Appeal, it has been raising funds designed for the consolidation of a Palestinian economic infrastructure in the West Bank in order to achieve better coordination of national projects."

Sociopolitical Overview

31

Education: Quantity Versus Quality The educational system in the West Bank is divided, as in the pre-1967 period of Jordanian control, into four levels: kindergarten; elementary cycle, including grades 1-6 and designed for six to twelve year olds; preparatory cycle, including grades 7-9 and designed for thirteen to fifteen year olds; and secondary cycle, including grades 10-12 and designed for fifteen to eighteen year olds.12 Higher education, especially at the university level, is a fifth cycle, which was created and developed after 1967. According to Jordanian law, education is compulsory throughout the elementary and preparatory cycles. A General Secondary School Certificate examination, the Tawjihi, is administered uniformly in the West Bank and serves to guide admissions policy to higher education institutions. The first and largest section of the West Bank school system is composed of state schools, which prior to 1967 were operated by the Jordanian government and afterward by the Israeli military government—kindergartens and universities are excluded from this category. United Nations Relief and Work Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) institutions make up a second administrative category, which includes elementary and preparatory levels and a few vocational and teacher-training institutions. A third category is composed of private institutions (the smallest sector), with some schools providing only kindergarten education and others providing additional cycles. All university education in the West Bank is operated privately. Government and UNRWA institutions provide free tuition. Some 280,000 students attended classes in more than 1,000 West Bank schools in 1981. Among these schools, 813 were managed by the government, 99 were managed by UNRWA, and 164 were privately owned in 1984. Table 2.1 presents a quantitative profile of the educational system in the West Bank and the changes the system experienced between 1968 and 1981. The total number of students increased by 87 percent—from 142,216 to 266,427—a much higher percentage than the 25.4 percent general rate of population growth in the same period. The number of classrooms increased by 79 percent, although the number of institutions decreased by 4 percent, from 1,158 to 1,105, probably as a result of the unification of public schools and the closure of some UNRWA and some private institutions. The number of students who passed the Tawjihi examinations, as illustrated in Table 2.2, is a good indicator of the quality of the system. The table indicates that although the number of students who took the exam grew by 320 percent between 1968 and 1984, the percentage of those who passed declined by some 12 percent. According to Palestinian sources, data compiled for the years 1969-1978 indicated that students in agricultural schools had the highest rate of success in the exam (more than 79 percent), while students in vocational and commercial schools had the lowest passing rates,

The Background

Table 2.1 The Educational System in level and administrative category) Category & Type Total Kindergarten Elementary Preparatory Secondary Vocational Agricultural Teacher training TOTAL Government Kindergarten Elementary Preparatory Secondary Vocational Agricultural Teacher training TOTAL UNRWA Kindergarten Elementary Preparatory Secondary Vocational Agricultural Teacher training TOTAL Private Kindergarten Elementary Preparatory Secondary Vocational Agricultural Teacher training TOTAL

STUDENTS 1968 1981

the West

Bank,

CLASSROOMS 1968 1981

1968-1981

3,805 104,207 23,098 10,584 263 41 218

8,811 165,188 54,712 34,418 1,284 342 1,672

93 3,,110 858 322 10 2 7

241 4 ,657 1 ,716 1 ,085 76 16 115

58 722 300 73 2 1 2

142,216

266,427

4,,402

7 ,906

1,158

- -

- -

•-

--

--

80,569 17,089 9,310 219 41 104

129,788 42,309 31,455 662 76 592

2..384 628 263 7 2 3

3 ,645 1 ,315 955 20 3 22

620 210 51 1 1 1

107,332

204,882

3 ,287

5

40 28,159 10,321

540 153

- -

18,839 4,586 -----

—

884

1 762 308

85 57 --

- -

--

--

262 266 1,023

--

12 13 91

--

8 3 5

1,105

( { (

( { (

--

693

1,187

142

3,805 4,799 1,423 1,274 44

8,771 7,241 2,082 2,963 360

93 186 77 59 3

240 250 93 130 44

58 17 33 22 1

- -

—

- -

--

793 3 2 2 800

--

40,071

- -

129

( { 960 (

--

23,425

- -

(by

INSTITUTIONS 1968 1981

VO Ot o

32

1 99 1 1 2 104

( { (

128 68 4 - -

114

57

4

2

1

1

11,459

21,474

422

759

132

201

Source; The Civilian Administration for the Area of Judea h Samaria, Activity Report - 1981. Jerusalem, The Civilian Administration, 1982, 118.

Sociopolitical Overview Table 2.2 Results of the Selected Years (1968-1984)

YEAR 1968 1972 1975 1977 1981 1984

Number of Students Who Took T h e Exam 3,221 6,373 7,611 8,300 13,092 13,608

33

Tawjihi Examination in the West Bank in

Number of Students W h o Passed 2,132 4,137 5,215 5,265 8,024 7,326

% Passed 66% 65% 68% 63% 61% 54%

Sources: The Civilian Administration for the A r e a of Judea and Samaria, Activity Reports - 1981 & 1984, Jerusalem, The Civilian Administration, 1982, 117; 1985, 68.

49 percent and 54 percent respectively. Secondary schools with an academic orientation had a 67 percent rate of success for students who took the literary examination and 75 percent for those who took the scientific. Student political activity and Israeli interference ranging from censorship on textbooks to harassment, closure of schools, and arrest of students are considered by Palestinians to be major causes of this disruption of the educational process. A higher education system in the West Bank did not exist as such before 1967. The best concession the Jordanian government was ready to make in this area was to allow the activity of some colleges, Bir Zayt near Ramallah and Al-Najah in Nablus, as well as a number of teacher-training institutions. In addition, two schools of commerce existed in Nablus and Ramallah, a polytechnic college in Hebron and a religious academy in Kalkilya. Due to pressure exerted by the West Bank community on the Israeli government in the early 1970s, radical changes in the system were introduced within the next decade, which included accreditation, curriculae and staff changes, and the granting of degrees (see Table 2.3). Bir Zayt, Al-Najah, and Bethlehem are the major universities in the West Bank and are complemented by several specialized institutions. The trustees of the various universities have established the Council for Higher Education whose function is to coordinate and regulate these institutions. However, Palestinian experts do contend that there is still a need for better coordination and for better definition of the role of higher education. The university system is plagued by other problems as well: inadequate facilities, including buildings, books, and equipment; insufficient qualified personnel; uncertain conditions; and Israeli interference in the system's activities. Illiteracy is another area of concern for West Bank educators. Although there are no overall reliable data for the entire West Bank, the latest census, conducted in 1961, revealed a 67 percent total illiteracy rate, with 47 percent

34

The Background

Table 2.3

University

A Schematic Profile of W e s t Bank Universities

Established

Location

No. Students 1979 1984

Faculty 1984

Degrees

1972 (active as college from 1924) 1973

R a m a l l a h 1 ,386

2,500

193

B.A. Diploma

Bethlehem

811

1,500

124

B.A. Diploma

al-Najah

1977

Nablus

1 ,982

3,450

197

B.A., Diploma

Jerusalem Religious College Nursing College

1978

Bet H a n i n a

1979

al-Birah

Abu-Dies College

1981

Abu-Dies (Jerusalem)

Hebron

1980

Hebron

Bir Zayt

Bethlehem (Catholic)

a

- -

- -

473a

310

16

B.A.

140

30

B.A.

300

69

B.A.

1725

60

B.A.

This figure is for 1980.

Sources: The Civilian Administration for the A r e a of Judea & Samaria, Activity Report - 1984, Jerusalem, the Civilian Administration, 1985, 63-69; Benvenisti, M., The W e s t Bank Handbook: A Political Lexicon, Jerusalem, Jerusalem Post, 1986, 209-212.

illiteracy among men and 84 percent illiteracy among women. Partial studies conducted in more recent years found that in 1971 illiteracy rates among men ranged from 25 to 40 percent, among women, from 64 to 89 percent, and among both sexes, from 45 to 61 percent. In 1976-1977 another study conducted in Bir Zayt University found a 15 to 37 percent range of illiteracy among men, 26 to 58 percent among women, and 21 to 44 percent among both sexes. Further progress in this area was reflected by data for 1983 in which the illiteracy rate for men was 13 5 percent and for women was 38.9 percent. An attempt to explain the factors underlying illiteracy in the West Bank revealed the following list of problems: lack of schools; social indifference on the part of parents and students alike; financial need, whereby older sons of large families are sent to work at an early age; neglect of the education of women; and insensitivity of traditional jobholders to schooling (employment among older men in agriculture and services does not demand literacy, nor does unskilled and semiskilled labor in Israel require literacy of the younger generation).' 3

Sociopolitical Overview

35

Overall analyses of the educational system made by Palestinians tend to blame the present situation whereby the West Bank is entangled in a web of Arab, Israeli, and international interests while pursuing its nation-building process for the limitations imposed on the West Bank community in formulating and implementing educational policies. These reasons have been used to explain why the quality and scope of schooling seem to b e diminishing, the n e e d for vocational and technical training remains largely unfulfilled, and the universities have so far evaded the issue of comprehensive planning. Palestinians everywhere place a high value on education, but this could lead to individual aggrandizement rather than to national d e v e l o p m e n t . . . . Though this situation may pertain in many parts of the world, its consequences in the West Bank . . . could b e m o r e serious than elsewhere."

Part 2 Mass Communications in the West Bank Modern communications research indicates that the mass media should be studied in the particular context in which they operate. Intrinsic criteria rather than traditional Western media classifications have been found essentiaI for understanding communications in Third World societies. In the Arab world, the strength, legitimacy, and character of ruling and opposition groups; the stability of the political system; the existence of a tradition of journalism; and the presence of external threat have given rise to three major models of media systems.' The mobilization press model, found in Arab countries that call themselves socialist and have undergone major political change, such as Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Algeria, and the Sudan, features a background of conflict with colonial powers, "liberation campaigns, " political turbulence, and unorthodox efforts of modernization. The printed and broadcast media are mobilized by the government and nationalized in most cases; they are usually subsidized by the regime and receive careful orientation on emphases, interpretation, and presentation. The loyalist press model typical of relatively conservative societies whose political development has so far been less turbulent, including Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Tunisia, and the Gulf states, is characterized by private ownership of the press (with state-operated broadcasting services) combined with loyalty to the regime, which is achieved through indirect controls rather than by total mobilization. The third media pattern, called the diverse model, applicable to the Lebanese pre-1982 system and to some extent also to Morocco and Kuwait, features more freedom of expression and less governmental pressure. These models are not perfectly compatible with classifications developed in the West nor with Third World media typologies. 2 Similarly, Palestinian media do not automatically fall into Arab World media categories. It is true that elements of all three models are present in

38

Mass Communications

West Bank mass communications, including a definite tone of mobilization, a combination of subsidized and privately owned media, and a pattern of diversity expressed by extreme fragmentation. But the media's specific structure is intimately related to the particular Palestinian social climate. In this sense, the most outstanding characteristic of the Palestinian social climate is, of course, the absence of and the struggle for political independence vis-à-vis an external ruling power as well as Arab and international pressures. Together with the growing presence of a Palestinian sociocultural identity—including a long journalistic tradition—mass communications in the West Bank occupy a special position compared with other Arab societies. Fierce competition among various groups does not allow for clearcut assessments of the influence, strength, legitimacy, and precise character of political, religious, and other influences. The PLO and the traditional pro-Jordan elite are, at present, the most polarized and influential groups, but it has become increasingly difficult to predict which will eventually achieve predominance, or whether a PLO-Hussein coalition will replace past and present feuds. Furthermore, despite its growing legitimization in representing Palestinian affairs, the PLO itself is not uniform, and its factions have displayed extremely fragmented positions. Internal economic and cultural strife add weight to the fragmented nature of society in the West Bank. In addition, the character of the external threats experienced by West Bank residents has been unique. For almost twenty years the Israeli presence has been a source of continuous daily threat. Nevertheless, the geographical proximity and the particular nature of this presence—with Israel as military ruler, commercial and cultural neighbor, job provider and modernization model and catalyzer—have given at least some ambiguity to the threats involved in the PalestinianIsraeli relationships. Furthermore, power struggles among Arab states and frequent shifis in their support of the Palestinian cause have contributed to an atmosphere of uncertainty and confusion with regard to the role of these states as allies or as additional sources of threat. Finally, the peculiar pattern of liberation and nation-building efforts whereby Palestinians in the West Bank have endured daily occupation hardships while their most influential representative—the PLO—has led the war elsewhere, with only seldom and not always flattering direct confrontation with Israel, certainly impinges on the unique character of the Palestinian situation. The media patterns generated by this background are expressed in the contentual, stylistic, and linguistic components of Palestinian media as well as in their organization, professional standards, and management and in the control imposed by political, military, cultural, and economic constraints.

3

Stocktaking

The West Bank is saturated with mass communications. Few societies of its size are served by a similar array of locally produced printed material, which includes three dailies, six weeklies, five periodicals, a host of other occasional publications in Arabic, and numerous materials in other languages intended for a foreign readership. Even fewer societies are "blessed" with geopolitical conditions in which dozens of radio and television stations are able to cross political and military borders. With an estimated twenty-two daily newspaper copies per 1,000 population, West Bank residents have a greater abundance of newspapers than most Arabs and in this regard equal Egypt and fall only slightly behind Kuwait (seventy-seven), pre-1983 Lebanon (seventy-two), the United Arab Emirates (twenty-seven), and Tunisia (twenty-four).1 The West Bank Press: A Developing Institution The development of the Palestinian press reveals both the special sociocultural position occupied by Palestinians in the Arab world and the turbulent events that shaped Middle Eastern modern history. Accordingly, even the chronological and quantitative dimensions of this development reflect upheaval, conflicting interests, and the resulting unstable atmosphere that began with the British Mandate in the aftermath of World War I, continued during the years ofJordanian rule from 1949 to 1967, and has become even more complicated since the Israeli occupation of the West Bank. The Arabic daily press in Palestine began with the publication in 1921 of Lisan al-Arab (The Arab's Voice) almost immediately upon the establishment of the British Mandate. It was preceded by some thirty periodical pub39

40

Mass Communications

lications, none of them on a daily basis, which were active during the last decade of the Turkish rule. These newspapers included the Haifa-based AlCarmel (Carmel), established in 1908, Filastin (Palestine), founded in Jaffa in 1911, and a variety of political publications, literary magazines, and shortlived underground pamphlets. Since its initial days, the Arabic press in Palestine has been highly politicized. Muslim-owned newspapers began to appear in the mid-1920s as a counterweight to the previous Christian predominance. This was followed by an adherence of the press to the family based ideological factions in the Arab community. Thus, the Nashashibi Jerusalem-based moderate faction was backed by Filastin, which became a daily in 1929, while Al-Difa'a (The Defense), established in 1934 as the Istiklal (Independence) party organ, replaced other minor publications supporting the radical anti-British, antiJewish Husseini faction. Such publications were encouraged by the British Mandator}' Government, whose colonial policy promoted the autonomous provision of services by the major ethnic groups in Palestine. Arab newspapers served to balance the renaissance of the local Jewish press promoted by the Zionist movement. In 1944 Palestinian Arabs had three daily newspapers, ten weeklies, and five quarterlies patterned in much the same way as the Palestinian Jewish Press. During the 1948 Arab-Jewish war that accompanied the establishment of Israel, the Palestinian Arab press moved to Jordanian-annexed East Jerusalem and established Jordan's first daily newspapers, which joined the only Amman-based publications of the time, the weeklies Al-Nasr (The Victory) and Al-Urdun (The Jordan); the latter, established in 1923 by a Lebanese family, was a limited circulation weekly and became a daily in 1949.2 The following two decades were characterized by tensions between Jordanian efforts to integrate the Palestinians into the kingdom and steps taken by the latter to preserve their national identity. The conflict was well expressed in the structure of the West Bank press prior to the Israeli capture of the area in 1967. Spreading criticism both in the local and foreign Arab press of the kingdom's integration policies and of its "weakness" concerning Israel was met in the mid-1960s by government instructions to reorganize the press. A process of mergers produced two dailies: A-Dustur (The Constitution), with headquarters in Amman, was formed in March 1967 by the union of the Palestinian Filastin and the Jordanian Al-Manar (The Lighthouse), which was established in I960; Al-Quds (Jerusalem) emerged from the union of veteran Al-Difa'a and Al-Jihad (The Holy War). The latter, established in Jerusalem in 1955, was the only newspaper founded in the West Bank after the 1950 official Jordanian annexation. The 1967 war interrupted this reorganization. The turmoil of war and the abrupt disruption of Jordanian annexation and control created a state of

Stocktaking

41

collective shock. Residents said that Jabal-al-Nar (Mountain of Fire), which overlooks Nablus, was reduced to a mountain of ashes. The economy was paralyzed, and all social life came to a standstill. This situation obviously affected the press. The publication of A-Dustur was discontinued in the West Bank, and it became part of the Jordanian press. The Al-Quds merger did not take place at all. A third reincarnation of A-Difa'a appeared instead, this time in the Jordanian capital. ' Immediately after the war, official Israeli offers of help were declined by West Bank publishers and editors. When shock and confusion were replaced by the relative normalization of life under occupation, the daily press returned to the newsstands, reflecting new circumstances and trends. Three daily newspapers have been published since the late 1960s, with editorial offices in East Jerusalem. Al-Qiids is owned by Jaffa-born businessman Mahmud Abu-Zuluf, who has been involved in journalism since his arrival in Jerusalem in 1948\ Al-Quds made its reappearance in 1968 as the first daily to be published after the war, and it featured a pro-Jordanian orientation. During the next three and a half years Al-Quds was the only daily newspaper in the West Bank. The press diversified when a more radical nationalist line became better organized. Al-Fajar-al-Arabi (The Arab Dawn) appeared in weekly format in April 1972 and became a daily two months later; Paul Ajluni, a Palestinian who has been a naturalized U.S. citizen since 1947, was registered as owner and publisher. Al-Fajar has supported the PLO line; a weekly English edition ofAl-Fajar has been published since April 1980 and a biweekly Hebrew edition since 1982. In June 1972 A-Sha'ab (The People) made its first appearance under the ownership and administrative direction of Nablus businessman Mahmud Ia'ish, a former partner in the abortive Jordanian Al-Quds venture. The first editor of ASha'ab was Ali al-Khatib, who gave the newspaper an aggressive image. He was deported in 1975. Under the current editor, Akram Haniyya, A-Sha'ab has shifted its support from the PLO radical line, particularly George Habash's extremist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, to Yasir Arafat's faction. Following the 1973 October war and its political aftermath, a second wave of publications began to appear in the West Bank. A literary monthly magazine, Al-Biadar (The Barn) was established by journalist Jack Hazmo in 1976, followed in 1978 by A-Tali'a (The Pioneer), a communist weekly edited by Bashir Barghutty, secretary of the Palestinian Communist party and a former editor of Al-Fajar. That same year, another leftist periodical was established, the arts and culture biweeklyAl-Shir'a (The Mast), followed in 1980 by a communist monthly magazine, Al-Kitab (The Writer). Four additional weeklies were established during this period, all supporting the PLO line: Al-Usbua-al-Jadid (The New Week), owned by Hanna Saniura, who is one of the Al-Fajar s editors, was published sporadically beginning in 1979

42

Mass Communications

and became a weekly in 1982\Al-Mitak (The Covenant) has been published since February 1980 under Mahmud Ali al-Khatib (the son of A-Sha'ab's editor who was deported to Jordan by the Israeli authorities); Al-Awda (The Comeback), which is owned by the Palestinian Press Service (see below), was published sporadically beginning in 1981 and became a weekly in February 1983; and Al-Uahada (The Union) began publishing in February 1982.4 Al-Mar'a (The Mirror), published on behalf of the Israeli sponsored Village Leagues, is distributed free of charge from its headquarters in the city of Ramal lah. In September 1980 Al-Fajar-al-Adabi, the literary supplement of AlFajar, became a separate monthly, the political section of Al-Biadar, published independently since 1981 under the titleAl-Biadar-al-Siasi (The Political Barn), became a biweekly in March 1982. Other literary, scientific, sports, student, and women's publications appear sporadically. In addition, a long list of religious publications appear in the West Bank under the auspices of the various missions and denominations represented in the Holy Land. Arabic newspapers and magazines published in the Middle East and throughout the world are also available in limited quantities. One can find on the newsstands of the West Bank, and especially in Jerusalem, newspapers whose headquarters were transferred from Beirut to Paris and London, such as Al-Mustakbal (The Future) and Al-Watan-al-Arabi (Arab Homeland); the Saudi-oriented Al-Usbua'-al-Arabi (The Arab Week), and the Egyptian dailies Al-Aharam (The Pyramids) and Akhbar-al-Yaum (News of the Day). PLO-oriented publications including Al-Huria (Freedom) and Filastin-aThawra (Revolutionary Palestine) also find their way to Palestinian readers. Although banned in the West Bank, this type of publication is allowed in Israel where Palestinians can read and photocopy them freely. In 1977 journalists Raymonda Tawil and Ibrahim Kar'in established the Palestine Press Service, a news agency based in Jerusalem, which propagates the PLO line and is apparently subsidized by PLO front organizations. The PPS has published daily and weekly bulletins and also has provided information and conducted fact-finding tours in the West Bank and the Gaza strip for local and foreign press and broadcasting services.

Broadcasting: The Electronic Arab Village Asimilar fragmentation is typical of Palestinian broadcasting, despite the fact that by 1967 West Bank residents had lost the scarce broadcast-generating capacity they had in earlier years. Until 1948 Arabic programs were broadcast in Palestine under the auspices of the British Mandatory Government. The Palestinian Broadcasting Service (PBS), established in 1936, transmitted

Stocktaking

43

programs in English, Arabic, and Hebrew to local Arab and Jewish communities, according to the colonial model set up throughout the British Empire. s During the 1948 Arab-Israeli war the PBS studios and facilities in Jerusalem were taken over by Israel, whereas the transmitters in Ramallah came under Jordanian control. The existence of these facilities and their accessibility to Palestinian Arab broadcasters and audiences did not mean necessarily that they were used for the achievement of Palestinian nationalistic objectives. Under British colonial control the transmission of contents in the Arabic and Hebrew sections of PBS was severely restricted. After 1948, broadcasts from West Bank-based Radio Ramallah were under tight Jordanian control, a fact that curbed Palestinian national expression, until the 1967 Six Day War when the kingdom lost control of the West Bank, including the radio facilities in Jerusalem and Ramallah. During the past few years an impressive array of broadcast materials had crossed the West Bank political and military borders throughout the day and night hours. This includes domestic radio from various Arab nations, Arabic transmissions by non-Arab stations, and specific Palestinian broadcasts. These broadcasts suggest the presence of a McLuhanite electronic "Arab village" in the Middle East. Drew McDaniel has proposed that around the Mediterranean, the geography, coupled with the propagation characteristics of the area, afford audiences easy access to signals from abroad. A common language and common technical standards make reaction and comprehension of the foreign broadcasting relatively simple. . . . Audiences are predisposed towards the use of broadcasts from abroad and such programs are usually accessible and understood." 6

Thus, the compact proximity of population centers in the Middle East brings their inhabitants within the convenient propagation zones of medium-wave radio stations and television transmitters. West Bank cities and villages are within 400 miles of broadcasting centers in Egypt, Turkey, Cyprus, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia, while Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan are in much closer range. The Mediterranean salted water enhances propagation and acts as a mirror for broadcast band (medium-wave) radio, whose transmission capability reaches at least 1,300 kilometers, and for television signals, which get across 500 kilometers, three times the maximum range in the Western Hemisphere.7

Radio Radio Cairo is undoubtedly the technically most powerful system in the electronic Arab village. The modest 72 kilowatt medium-wave transmitter seized by the revolutionary regime that came into power in 1952 was developed in less than a decade to some 2,000 kw. In the 1970s more than two

44

Mass Communications

thousand program personnel and twenty-five hundred engineering staff worked in forty-three studios broadcasting m o r e than 1,200 weekly hours in fourteen services, six of them for foreign audiences. Since the mid-1960s Radio Cairo's programs output in thirty-one languages has exceeded the output of any non-Western international service, except for Radio Peking.8 At present, West Bank residents can listen to Radio Cairo's domestic service around the clock between 5:30 A.M. and 2:30 A.M. daily; to the foreign services including Saut-el-Arab ( T h e Voice of the Arabs), which since 1953 is the best known, most widely listened to service in the Arab world; to the Middle East Service (begun in 1959); and to the Holy Kur'an Service (begun in 1964). Each can be heard daily for more than seventeen hours. Syrian, Jordanian, Iraqi, Iranian, and Lebanese governmental radio services as well as broadcasts of various Lebanese factions can be heard during similar time periods. Libyan and North African broadcasts also are available in the West Bank. Radio coverage includes an additional variety of non-Arab stations, with a weekly output of 800 hours, led by The Voice of Israel (120 weekly hours) and the BBC. Broadcasts in Arabic w e r e the first non-English service transmitted by the BBC in 1938. By 1955 the BBC offered some 30 weekly hours of Arabic programming. Since the 1956 Suez campaign broadcasts increased to 70 hours per week, thereby exceeding the output (if any other language transmitted from London other than English.9 Since 1981 Western European broadcasts in Arabic have been available from additional countries: Radio Monte Carlo, a commercial enterprise owned mainly by the French government, accounts for some 120 hours per week; it transmits from Paris by a microwave link and undersea cable to a powerful medium-wave transmitter in Cyprus. Broadcasts from West Germany, Spain, Holland, Italy, Greece, and Switzerland provide an additional 170 weekly hours. The Voice of America Rhodes' transmitter adds another 50 weekly hours in Arabic. Other nonArab broadcasts are available from East European, Asian, and sub-Saharan African countries, with a combined weekly output of almost 400 hours. However, the quality of their medium-wave transmissions is rather poor. Since the mid-1950s residents of the West Bank and of other Middle Eastern countries have been able to listen to Palestinian radio broadcasts. About twenty national services of this nature have been available; these have been transmitted over various frequencies from different Arab countries and have featured unsuccessful attempts at centralization and coordination. At first, these broadcasts w e r e offered by host countries. They w e r e produced and transmitted by the staff of nationally controlled radio stations with some Palestinian participation. The first Palestinian radio service was established in 1954. It is no coincidence that Nasser's Radio Cairo initiated this type of service, thereby setting a precedent for Egyptian initiative in almost all future Palestinian broadcast-

Stocktaking

45

ing services. Nasser's aspirations for leadership in the Arab world, his concern with the Palestinian problem in the context of his pan-Arabic policies, and his inclination toward broadcasting necessarily led Egypt to this role. Run by Radio Cairo staff on short wave for fifteen minutes a day, high hopes were put on this new vehicle to express the Palestinian cause. The Palestine Service of Radio Cairo expanded rapidly, and by January 1962 was broadcasting two-and-one-half hours a day over a combination of short- and mediumwave frequencies. Nasser's example was followed in 1962 by Iraq's daily fifteen minute "Palestine Program" and by Syria's forty-five minute "Palestine Broadcast" in 1964. Both services were run by Iraqi and Syrian broadcasters. This broadcasting pattern changed in the mid-1960s with the establishment of the Palestine Liberation Organization. In line with the PLO's demand for more direct Palestinian responsibility, host governments allocated air time for semiautonomous programs of varying duration, thereby creating the "Voice of Palestine" (VOP) model. In March 1965 the first "Voice of Palestine" went on the air under the auspices of the Egyptian government, with studios and transmitters in Egypt, slices of time taken from Egyptian radio services on various wavelengths, and Palestinian staff trained at Radio Cairo. After its dedication by Ahmad Shuqairi, chairman of the PLO executive, the VOP made considerable progress, and by September of the same year it was on the air six hours a day. "The Voice of Palestine-Jordan" went on the air in May 1966, for one hour daily, transmitted over Jordanian domestic facilities. Two months later Radio Baghdad inaugurated its fifteen minute daily "Palestinian Corner." Both programs were prepared by PLO officials. The gradual increase in the acquisition of power and influence by the PLO, and the various degrees of support won by the organization in the Arab world, led to more autonomous and centralized PLO broadcasting services following the 1967 Six Day War. Despite experts' comments on a general cooling of radio propaganda in the Middle East after the war,10 further developments occurred in the immediate postwar years. A new service, the Voice of Storm (later The Voice of Fatah) went on the air in May 1968 and transmitted from Egypt over the medium-wave frequency employed by Radio Cairo's Middle East Service. One hour daily was allocated to and operated by Al-Fatah, the most powerful organization under the PLO umbrella. In September of the same year, Radio Baghdad began to relay Voice of Storm's broadcasts. In August 1969 Sudanese Radio Omdurman followed suit. As tension mounted within the context of the imminent Palestinian confrontation with the Jordanian army, which culminated in 1970 in Black September, centralization of broadcasting became an important PLO objective. Efforts made by the PLO Central Committee in this direction produced, in August 1970, a second Voice of Storm operated from somewhere in south-

46

Mass Communications

western Syria, with a clandestine independent PLO transmitter supplied by the People's Republic of China after long negotiations. 11 This station used the same theme song used by the Egyptian-based Voice of Storm. Additional broadcasting services came under central coordination, including Radio Baghdad's new two hour daily "Voice of the Palestinian Revolution," a similarly titled Radio Damascus broadcast, which replaced the former "Palestine Broadcast," and Radio Algiers' "Voice of Storm." The unification of the PLO information services in June 1972 brought PLO-controlled services in Cairo, Damascus, Algiers, Baghdad, and later in the Sudan, to adopt the same n a m e — T h e Voice of Palestine, Voice of the Palestinian Revolution—and the same theme song. However, real coordination never did occur, despite the active role played by these stations in the 1973 Yom Kippur war. Each station kept to its own previous policies, with Cairo attacking Israel (except during the 1975-1979 negotiations), Baghdad attacking Amman, and Damascus attacking the United States. Concurrently, governments not previously active in Palestinian radio felt compelled to participate, at least symbolically, in broadcasting activities. Saudi Arabia followed the earlier host-country, government-controlled model, making frequencies and facilities of Radio Riyadh and Radio Jiddah available for a fifteen minute daily "With the Fidaiyin" program in 1969Libyan Radio, under the Muammar Qaddafi regime, started a weekly "Voice of Fatah" program in 1970. T h e Jordanian government made a similar move even earlier. In J u n e 1966, less than two months after the initial operation of "Voice of Palestine-Jordan," PLO control of the program was given to Radio Amman staff following the mounting friction between King Hussein and Palestinians in the kingdom. In the decade following the October 1973 war, the only Palestinian programs to continue broadcasting o n e hour or more a day were from Cairo, Damascus, Baghdad, Algiers, and the clandestine Voice of Palestine (which operated from Lebanon between 1975 and 1982). The VOP-Cairo led them all with two hours a day of broadcasting. A variety of frequencies were used, with more or less clear signals. 12 In summary, despite the large number of stations and programs, the availability of these Palestinian services in exile was determined first by shifts in the political positions of the host governments, Israel, the superpowers, and other Western and Eastern countries and second, by the internal divisions among the Palestinians themselves, even when decisions on coordination were made. T h e results everywhere included sharp changes in broadcast contents and erratic transmission patterns. Changes were most marked during crises and major events (when West Bank residents probably needed m o r e information and guidance) such as the Egyptian revolution and Nasser's campaign for pan-Arab leadership, the establishment and growth of the PLO, the

Stocktaking

47

Six Day War, Black September, the October 1973 war, Egyptian-Israeli peace negotiations, and the Lebanese crisis. The 1982 extermination of the PLO's military power did not contribute, apparently, to the credibility and effectiveness of Palestinian broadcasts in the West Bank.

Television In May 1981 avid television viewers in Jerusalem, Nablus, Ramallah, and Hebron sat in front of their TV sets for more than three consecutive hours watching a live broadcast of the Palestine National Council meeting in Damascus in which Yasir Arafat addressed the entire Arab world. The fact that Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank were able to view their leaders' discussions live in the best tradition of Nasserite political broadcasting represented a new dimension in their liberation and nation-building aspirations. This was made possible by the installation of a powerful new Syrian transmitter at the top of the Jabal-a-Druze (Druze Mountain) facing the Jordanian border. Since this symbolic inaugural broadcast residents of mountainous areas of the West Bank can receive clear television signals from Damascus. These transmissions have supplemented the fair supply of available television programs, depending on geographical locations, weather conditions, and suitable antennas. Although more restrained in propaganda content and tone compared to radio broadcasts, television has provided an additional link between the West Bank and the rest of the Arab world. In 1968 Jordan Television established broadcasts over two channels for twelve simultaneous hours daily, with good reception in the entire West Bank. Egyptian Television, established in the early 1960s during the Nasser-inspired broadcasting boom, supplied another fourteen hours daily over two channels reaching the central and southern West Bank regions (as well as the Gaza strip). Residents of the northern West Bank and those in the hilly areas can watch Syrian Television seven hours a day, supplemented by occasionally good reception of Lebanese regular channels and of the low-powered television service installed during the 1982 hostilities by the Christian forces of south Lebanon (sponsored by a church-affiliated organization). Finally, both Israel Television programs, including o n e and one-half hours daily in Arabic and five hours in Hebrew (with Arabic subtitles) are available in the entire West Bank.

4

Palestinian Media: Content, Style, and Language

Palestinian mass media display some common denominators intimately related to nation-building processes, such as the expression of national consciousness vis-à-vis Israel, the Arab world, the international community, and the Palestinians in the West Bank and elsewhere; the search for a particular cultural profile; and the emphasis on mobilization. On the other hand, the products of these media, particularly of the West Bank press, in terms of content, style, and language reflect a problematic Third World nature. In a pattern not uncommon in developing countries and typical of Arab mass communication, journalistic contents are the combined product of the importance ascribed to words in Arab culture, political factionalism, and the wish to contribute to national mobilization.

The Contents of the West Bank Press: The Importance of Words In a symposium published by the Jordanian daily A-Dustur in February 1980, the former editor of Al-Fajar, Ma'amun al-Saiyyed, stated that there are narrow margins between what the occupation wants for us and what we want. Within those narrow margins we emphasize national institutions and activities, and we fight against actions which contradict it We bring out Palestinian national culture and concentrate on the historical and national depth of the Palestinian problem in an effort to make the voice of Palestine heard from the conquered land in the entire Arab world and in the international arena We attempt to be the voice of the "interior" for the "outside" and the voice of the "outside for the interior."'

48

Palestinian Media

49

Indeed, the West Bank press addresses most of the crucial problems faced by Palestinian society at present—namely, how to deal with occupation and how to promote national identity. These motifs permeate the newspapers' contents, 65 percent of which deals with overall Arab and Palestinian affairs, including the effects of occupation; 15 percent with Israel, including matters not directly related to occupation, and 20 percent with international affairs, some of global character and some related to the Arab world, to the Palestinian problem, and to Israel.2

Internal Matters According to one of the few systematic content analyses of the West Bank press, topics concerned with liberation and identity are the most emphasized, followed by problems of internal organization and foreign affairs. ' Due to censorship limitations, less space is dedicated to more delicate issues, such as land confiscation, Jewish settlements, and Palestinian resistance and civil disobedience. A wide range of topics appear in news items, editorials, translations, cultural and sports sections, and advertisements, with very little differentiation. In the framework of the newspapers' self-imposed mobilization and of "Tawi'at-al-Sha'ab" (The People's Guidance), a heavy emphasis has been given to Palestinian identity through the promotion of nationalist ideas and slogans, Palestinian history, national poetry, folklore, and Palestinian culture. Ideological articles have been matched by items on Palestinian cultural weeks, art exhibits, theater performances, and sports, making up more than 24-25 percent of the combined output of the three daily newspapers on internal matters. About 33 percent oiAl-Fajar's writing on internal matters is dedicated to these aspects of national identity, compared with 23.8 percent in A-Sha'ab and 15.2 percent in Al-Quds. Thus, the political meaning of the Palestinian entity, Arab government decisions, inter-Arab gatherings, Israeli policies regarding the West Bank, and major Palestinian events—such as Black September, Arafat's appearance at the United Nations, Sadat's peace initiative, and the war in Lebanon—have been used by the West Bank press to emphasize questions of identity." Support for the PLO is another salient topic; it occupies more than 20 percent of the combined output of the three dailies on internal matters. Obvious differences in emphasis can be recognized, according to the newspapers' political lines, but a basic consensus prevails. Thus, during the revolt against Yasir Arafat's leadership following the war in Lebanon, Al-Fajar and A-Sha'ab consistently supported Arafat and published his photograph in large size as soon as he was declared persona non grata in Syria. Both newspapers were

50

Mass Communications

flooded with public statements condemning Syria and supporting Arafat. Although Al-Quds did not support the rebels, it did not condemn them nor Syria directly, which was in line with the Jordanian stand. Al-Quds called in minor tones for unity in the PLO.5 Similar differences exist regarding expressions of support for the Palestinian people by foreign governments. In September 1984 A-Sha'ab published a 6 column headline; "France Emphasizes Its Support of the Rights of the Palestinian People," followed by a 42-inch report of a meeting between Yasir Arafat and the the French foreign minister Claude Chausson. Al-Fajar followed suit; Al-Quds was more moderate, with a headline reading, "Both Sides Emphasize There Are No Differences of Opinion." 6 It is important to mention in this context that all three newspapers relied on the same source, the official France Press news agency. As much as allowed by the censor, Palestinian newspapers report on incidents involving land confiscation and Israeli settlements, terrorism, and Palestinian resistance and civil disobedience. Every Israeli decision or action regarding new settlements is reported in detail by all West Bank newspapers, which usually rely on Israeli sources. In July 1984, for example, AlQuds reported a settlement "operation," while Al-Fajar announced a settlement "offensive" to be carried out in connection with the pending Israeli election." Support is often expressed for resistance or terrorist activities, such as the planting of a bomb in downtown Jerusalem and the hijacking of a bus, both in April 1984. These events were reported by all three newspapers, accompanied by big headlines and photographs. The reporting style did not conceal press sympathies. Al-Fajar wrote about a "military Palestinian detail that carried out a military operation," while A-Sha'ab described the force as a "commando unit" and called the families whose houses were demolished "martyrs."" Demonstrations, strikes, demolition of houses, funerals, and major events appear in the West Bank press whenever possible. Editorials, photographs, and big headlines accompany reports on holidays such as the establishment of the PLO (January 1), the Day of the Land (March 31), the Israeli Day of Independence (May 15), the June 1967 War, the Sabra and Shatila massacres (September 18), the Balfour Declaration (November 29), and so on. The journalistic treatment of these subjects has been allegedly linked with civil disobedience; the military government has accused the press of agitation.9 Sections of Palestinian history feature glorious Arab events, accounts of Palestinian martyrology, and "letters to the editor" sections reflect internal West Bank debate, with positions ranging from mild identification with the Arab world to extreme Palestinian radical expressions. In addition to political writing, the press in the West Bank can be characterized as being truly local, even provincial. Examples of provincialism include news on high

Palestinian Media

51

school commencement ceremonies, publication of exam results, and information on West Bank residents arriving and departing to and from foreign countries.10 Notwithstanding ideological differences among West Bank newspapers, writing on internal matters displays a clear preference for a specific Palestinian identity. The Palestinian affinity for Arab culture, however, is not entirely disregarded. It finds its expression in news and features from the Arab world, including items on overall Arabic and Islamic culture and religion that are frequently copied or rewritten from incoming newspapers.

Writing About Israel An increasing awareness of the internal Israeli scene has been typical of the West Bank press." Al-Fajarwas the first newspaper to feature items on Israel, with translations of Israeli press editorials, political articles, and news, followed by reactions and commentary. At present, the newspaper devotes an entire inner page to such material. The other newspapers and periodicals in the West Bank also have allocated space for material on Israel, which at present makes up about 15 percent of the overall contents. At first, a strong emphasis was given to "negative'7 topics, such as Israel's social strife, economic problems, and political instability. Protest demonstrations advocating equal rights for ethnic groups within the Jewish population, such as the Israeli Black Panthers, strikes, crime, and actions by Gush Emunim and Rabbi Meir Kahane, received ample coverage in the Palestinian press. During the editorship of Ali al-Khatib, which lasted until his deportation in late 1975,A-Sha'ab used a mocking sarcastic tone in its articles on occupation, an attitude that was not only anti-Israeli but on occasion also antiSemitic. In the "Good Morning" section this newspaper called the Israeli government a-jama'a, "the gang." When former U.N. Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim condemned an act of terrorism, he was described in the same section as being Jewish, a "fact" proven by his name: wald in Arabic means child or son, and heim was described as a misspelling of the Hebrew name Haim; thus, according to this argument, Waldheim's real name is Ben-Haim, Haim's son, which proves his Jewish extraction. Readers also were constantly reminded by "al-Khatib of Henry Kissinger's Jewish origin, by calling him Aharon Kissinger."12 Since the late 1970s, however, some changes have taken place. Together with the emphasis on occupation and settlement policies, newspapers also report on more "positive" aspects, including peace movements, the Israeli left, and literature and art in Israel. In this context, Al-Quds published chapters of Israeli journalist Zeev Schiff's book Earthquake in October (1973);

52

Mass Communications

Ghassan Tahbub, the political editor of Al-Fajar, published an analysis in which he urged the PLO to encourage dialogue with the Israeli peace movements, despite their weakness in the Israeli political arena.'3 Israeli journalists interpreted this shift as indicative of the relative legitimization of Israel in the Arab world and West Bank journalists saw it as indicative of the closer contacts some Palestinian leaders have had with Israelis and the amicable professional links among Palestinian editors and reporters and their peers in the Israeli press. Another interpretation of the shift toward more positive press is that this type of writing has been part of the positive sumud trends in the West Bank (see Chapter 1), revealing the role played by the press in promoting the philosophy of "standing fast," in order to ease the tension between personal and national pride and the need to maintain contact with the Israeli occupiers. This decrease in "negative reporting" has not been consistent, however, and has been influenced by Israeli events perceived by Palestinian journalists as critical for the West Bank. Thus, the 1977 election in which the right-wing Likud party came to power, the Israeli internal dimension of the war in Lebanon, the activities of Israeli extremists, especially the religious underground movement and Rabbi Kahane, have been emphasized by the Palestinian press in recent years. In a content analysis of the West Bank press from March to September 1984, for example, 25 percent of the combined 534 inches of material on Israel in all three newspapers dealt with the extreme right in Israel; 20 percent with internal Israeli politics, particularly the July 1984 election; and 15 percent with war in Lebanon. Less than 4 percent dealt with the Israeli peace movements. Other Israeli topics covered in this period were items related to the autonomy plan (10 percent), military and security matters (9 percent), Israeli economy (7 percent), and miscellaneous topics, including items on Israeli society, culture, education, medicine, foreign relations, official appointments, statistical data, and human interest stories (10 percent).' 4

International Affairs The coverage of international affairs, which occupies almost 20 percent of the total contents of the newspapers in the West Bank, includes items on various countries, on superpower policies and actions, on matters with "inner page news value," and on "colorful trivia." The sources of this material are newspapers from the United States, Europe, and Arab countries from which items of interest are copied, translated, or rewritten. Only a small amount of material is supplied directly by news agencies.

Palestinian Media

53

The Contents of Broadcasting: The People's Voice? The abundance of radio channels available to the West Bank population does not necessarily assure the quality and variety of contents. Most domestive, unreliable, and unreflective of listeners' needs and expectations.15 In the absence of audience research, an absence that is sometimes intentional the absence of audience research, an absence that is sometimes intentional and sometimes the result of a lack of resources and knowhow, a routine fare of guided news and commentary/music/entertainment is typical of most broadcasting schedules and is determined by station managers and political officials independently of audience preference and reaction.16 The responsiveness of such contents to the particular needs of West Bank residents is thus obviously limited to these practices and by the remote origin of radio programs. Moreover, the tendency in post-Nasser Egypt as well as in other Arab countries since the 1970s to concentrate on the development of domestic ratio—albeit with some formal commitment to the Palestinian problem—makes the bulk of Arab programming largely irrelevant to the particular needs of Palestinian nation building.1" The situation in other areas around the dial is different, especially in the case of some foreign services such as Radio Monte Carlo, the BBC, or the Voice of Israel, and the Voice of Palestine. In sharp contrast with most Arab stations, Radio Monte Carlo's usually pro-Palestinian newscasts are based on live reporting by an extensive network of correspondents in the Arab world or on telex communications. "Panorama," a political analysis program, is central in current affairs broadcasts. The schedule features, in addition, a variety of specific programs for women, as well as interviews, drama, and music. A rich variety of up-to-date popular music, presented by skilled announcers, gives a cosmopolitan flavor to the regionally oriented schedule, which is enhanced by advertisements of European products, such as cars, cigarettes, and electric appliances. The Arabic service of the BBC has been considered a leader in innovative Arabic programming and always has been capable of attracting superior radio talent from the Arab world.18 At present, the BBC features newscasts and reports on world and regional affairs, usually translated from its regular bulletins. Scientific and educational programs, features, and entertainment also are broadcast by the service. Following its self-assigned role of counterbalancing Arab-supported stations, the Voice of Israel in Arabic emphasizes newscasts, as evidenced by its eleven daily news bulletins, which are broadcast hourly in the early morning and in the evening. In addition, the service features four weekly newscasts for the Israeli-Arab community and three for the West Bank. Commentary, entertainment, music, and answers to listeners' letters are interspersed

54

Mass Communications

between the news. In comparing the foreign radio services with the various Voice of Palestine stations, a leading West Bank journalist has said that theVOP is "the emotional expression of the Palestinian people. Despite some professional problems," he remarked, "it broadcasts pieces of our life, rather than English, French, 'Anglicized' or 'Frenchized' culture. It is truly Palestinian."19 Whether or not this is a correct assessment, and despite the numerous organizational changes the Voice of Palestine has undergone, its contents have changed very little since Ahmad Shuqairi, the first chairman of the PLO Executive Committee, dedicated the initial version of the service in 1965. "The poems in it will sing of the beauty of Palestine," he said. "Its stories will deal with the heroism of the Palestinian people, its plays with liberation. Its songs will express the cries of the strugglers and admiration for the strugglers. This broadcast will not be concerned with amusement and entertainment as long as we are outside Palestine."20 However, the scattered originating stations and the controls exercised by host countries caused Voice of Palestine to feature a narrow range of programming formats, as compared with foreign services or even with some Arabic domestic broadcasts. This limited variety has included newscasts gathered from host country services, from the Arab and international press and broadcasting, and from Wakalat Akhbar Falastiniah (WAFA), the Beirut-based (until the 1982 war) Palestinian News Agency. Programming also includes commentaries, reactions, talk shows, announcements of PLO decisions and actions, and PLO fighting songs, which are known as anashid.21 Documentaries, plays, and instructional broadcasts are rare. The various services have been assiduously engaged in propaganda campaigns, especially in times of war with Israel (1967, 1973, and 1982 for example), during PLO feuds with Arab hosts, including Black September and the Sadat peace initiative, and during PLO operations such as bombings, airplane hijackings, and the 1972 Munich massacre.22 The 1982-1983 PLO defeat in Lebanon, which was followed by dispersion of the organization's leadership and by internal divisions, has made apparent two basic functions of the Voice of Palestine—first, as an internal communications channel for the remotely connected PLO parts and particles and second, as an almost unidirectional channel from the PLO to the West Bank population.

Television Television news begins at 7:30 P.M., with the Arabic newscast on Israel TV. . . . Coverage of Palestinian affairs is limited, and reports on demonstrations, strikes and Jewish settlements are rare. These issues are dealt with in the 8 P.M. Jordanian Television main newscast. Following boring reports on King Hussein's and the royal family's tours and meetings, or official

Palestinian Media

55

guests' airport arrivals/departures, the news includes many reports from the West Bank, photographed and recorded by foreign correspondents, who smuggle them to Amman. But tew reports are broadcast on PLO affairs. . . . So those annoyed by Jordanian television can switch at 8:30 P.M. to the Syrian TV news. The usual opening times are just as boring as in Jordan, with reports on Ba'ath Party's celebrations in Syrian small towns. Other items can b e of more interest to West Bank residents, since they include details on developments in the radical camp, with particular reference to the PLO. . . . The Hebrew news bulletin "Mabat" at 9 P.M. on Israel Television can supply additional information on the West Bank, because it provides material not dealt with in the Arabic news. Items on settlements, land expropriation, arrests and civil unrest have been covered so that the lack of Hebrew knowledge has not often been a prohibitive condition to understanding. 21

This description, offered by an Israeli journalist, approaches television newscasts in the West Bank as if they were components of one coordinated network. The total dependence on foreign news sources—the Palestinian press shares the same TV satellite and news agencies with Israeli, Jordanian, and other Middle East TV services—and the lack of correspondents in other countries (with the exception of Israel TV) expose West Bank residents to similar materials from various sources and to frequent repetitions of the same items. Uniformity is broken by the diverse political orientations of the government-controlled TV systems, a diversity that is expressed in different cutting and editing styles and, obviously, in announcing and editorial policies. A similar multichannel division of labor is typical of other types of programming, especially among the best available channels in the West Bank, namely, single channel Israel TV and two-channel Jordan TV Following a well-known Third World broadcasting pattern, both feature a heavy load of foreign documentary and scientific, dramatic, and entertainment programs imported from the same sources.24 U.S., British, and French programs are broadcast with Arabic subtitles. The blooming Egyptian feature film industry is another important source of TV programs. This dependence on the same foreign program suppliers increases the share of popular programs. Some series, such as "Fame," "The Muppets Show," and worldwide record-breaker "Dallas" have been broadcast concurrently on both channels, although with different starting points. Thus, the West Bank audience, together with viewers in Israel and Jordan, are able to watch two, instead of one, weekly episode. Other series, such as British "Oneidin Line" and "War and Peace," have been broadcast in different seasons and often are reruns. This multichannel availability also serves to increase the typically meager fare of local programs produced by each of the stations. Studio talk shows, women's, farmers', and health magazines, contests, entertainment, and some drama,

56

Mass Communications

mostly in situation comedy format, make up the core of such programs on both Israel TV (in Arabic and subtitled Hebrew programs) and on Jordan TV Although these programming patterns are intended primarily for the domestic audience in Israel and Jordan, they do not ignore the West Bank, as illustrated by the slides used in both services as fillers between programs and as station identification. Together with landscapes and historical sites in Israel and Jordan proper, slides in both services also feature views of the West Bank. Sometimes identical and frequently portraying religious sites in Jerusalem and views of Ramallah or Nablus, the only distinction between these slides is the small emblem of Israel and Jordan broadcasting authorities in one of the lower corners. In a more general sense, the networklike character and the complementarity of both services may be illustrated by some facets of the competition between them. This has been expressed in scheduling practices: "Dallas," for example, has been broadcast on Jordan TV at the same time as the popular "Mabat" Hebrew news bulletin on Israel TV The Jordanian news in Hebrew intends to break the monopoly on news in this language that was previously enjoyed by the Israeli broadcasting service. A second expression of this competition/complementarity relationship is that each station pirates news items broadcast by the other whenever such items are unavailable locally due to political and military limitations. The Israeli press regularly publishes Jordan TV schedules as if the station were a second channel. The third best-received service, Syrian television, introduces some variety into this pattern through its news and current affairs broadcasts and through its imported Eastern European programs.

Style and Language: Mobilization and Factionalism The style and language of Palestinian media, regardless of their printed or broadcast nature or their origin, are affected by at least three common factors. First, a militant style of mobilization and advocacy permeates most messages and is in line with the characterization of the "mobilization press" as "aggressive, combative, hyperbolic, quick to react to events and to paint black-and-white pictures." 25 Most Palestinian mass communicators seem to have joined Third World professionals in adopting the development journalism model whereby all national resources, including the mass media, are utilized, above all, for liberation and nation-building efforts. 26 Consequent professional norms do not accept the Western value attached to objectivity, impartiality, and distinction between facts and views, news and editorial material. Thus, reliable Palestinian sources admit that insinuation, omission, distortion, contradiction, and half-truth are common practice in the Palestinian media. The shortage of high-level professionals enhances this approach even more. 2 "

Palestinian Media

57

A journalistic content analysis of the West Bank press in the mid-1970s conducted by a usually sympathetic Israeli correspondent illustrated this point. When Arab workers were dismissed from an Israeli textile factory, West Bank press coverage painted the dismissal as a nineteenth century affair in which greedy owners dispossessed underpaid and hungry workers. No mention was made of protests by Israeli official organizations and individuals, nor of the subsequent solution whereby the workers were repositioned. Similarly, reports on arrests are obviously intended to arouse anger, as is made obvious by sentences such as "the family does not know where he was taken and why he was arrested," or "his fate is unknown." 28 The mobilization function of such reportage is aided by the second characteristic of the West Bank press style, namely, the intrinsic value of words in Arab societies. Experts maintain that the Arab language had deep historical, cultural, religious, and political meanings. Arabs everywhere have been imbued with respect for the written and spoken word, which served to record their glorious past and which has been connected with Islam.29 In addition, some esthetic qualities of the Arabic language make it particularly suitable for its use in the press and broadcasting, including a rich grammar, a repetitive style, and a quality of vagueness, whereby responsibility for understanding is left to the listener.' 0 Thus, it has been argued by Arab scholars that language in the Arab world helps to shape content in such a way that words often take precedence over ideas and ideas take precedence over facts." The resulting approach is compatible with international revolutionary jargon. West Bank press items abound with concepts such as "freedom," "justice," "oppression," "the Israeli/Zionist entity," "the robbed land," "the Holy Land," "loyalty to the people's objectives," and "struggle for national goals." Headlines such as "Political Revenge," "Jilazun Won't Give Up," "A-Najah's Crisis," "Bookstore's Invasion," "Massive Arrests," and "Collective Punishment" also are frequently used. 32 Verbs and adjectival phrases that imply power and coercion appear frequently, including "Israeli forceful breakthrough," "destroyed Palestinian houses," "uprooted Palestinians," "took apart the students' dormitories during the search," while suitable opposing phrases are used to portray the Palestinian ordeal: "the suffering people," "the lonely, poor mother," "the cruel and inhuman interrogation." Metaphors and pictorial language also are common, such as "the loopholes of Israeli democracy," "strike with an iron fist," "bridges of return," as are suggestive titles. West Jerusalem is called "Teddy Kollek's Municipality" after its mayor's name, and the post-1967 Jewish neighborhoods are referred to as "settlements." The West Bank is invariably referred to as "the occupied territories" in contrast to the Israeli term "administered areas," and the term "people of the organizations" is used to replace the word "terrorists" employed in Israel. 33 The Arab fascination with words may explain the prevailing emphasis

58

Mass Communications

on sound and the poor visual quality of Arab television.34 Referring to newscasts, an Arab TV director in Israel Television said that in Arab television the announcer dominates the screen, stiff and pompous as a frozen statue. He never coughs and always looks at the camera. His or her hands are never to be seen. Formally dressed—with coat and tie—they return every day to our living rooms, always dressed u p . . . . People's voices are never heard in reports from the field or in interviews in the street. You see them answering the question, but you hear the announcer's monotonous voice reporting what was said.3S

Another characteristic of West Bank press style is factionalism. Each of the Palestinian media has an unmistakable political identification and bears the stamp of its originating organization, be it Jordanian, communist, PLO, or Arab government. Unlike the Third World, however, or the mobilization and loyalty press models prevailing in Arab societies, Palestinian media as a whole are not affiliated with one central source of power.1" Conflicting philosophies are expressed in mutual attacks, lack of coordination, and differences of style. Frequent media wars are illustrated by the statement that "in the Arab world . . . the context... often makes it easier to create disputes than to quell them."37 Likewise, Al-Fajar's editor commented that "it is our basic duty to expose the non-national newspapers which constantly work against the Palestinian cause and join the conspiracy against i t . . . . Time after time we rose up against the attacks and rumors which were spread by AlQuds, the aim of which was to fragment national unity and to strike at the Palestinian liberation movement."38 The differences between left-wing newspapers and Al-Quds have taken linguistic form—the left-wing press has "baptized" Al-Quds with the name "the palace's newspaper" (meaningjordanian King Hussein's court). Vicious physical expression of these differences also has occurred. Threatening letters and telephone calls have been received by Al-Quds' editor, and his car has been set on fire.39 A tone of mobilization, respect for and manipulation of language, and factionalism are typical, with some variations, of Palestinian media as well as of Arab mass communications in general. Thus, both present stylistic similarities, including exaggeration, appeal to pride and shame, expressions of readiness to take action, forthrightness, steadfastness, invocation of religion, vagueness of thought, and sarcasm.40 Beyond these common features and beyond differences caused by the special nature of printed and electronic media, the press in the West Bank differs in style, tone, and language from the press and broadcasting originated elsewhere. Nation-building dilemmas are a significant feature of this difference. The stylistic freedom allowed by the Arab language has proved compatible with the spirit of mobilization in the West Bank, contributing to the expres-

Palestinian Media

59

sion by the local press of a genuine national awareness vis-à-vis pan-Arabic and pan-Islamic orientations. But in contrast with this compatibility a nationbuilding dilemma is expressed in the tension between the traditional value of words and the more modern demand for action. One of the characters in a novel by Palestinian author Rashid Abu Shawar listens to the radio in the wake of the 1967 war and says that "someone was shouting something about war and victory and the love of country. Can't they do something instead of singing? Why don't they do something?"4' A cartoon published in the spring of 1972 in a Kuwaiti newspaper showed a large radio receiver made to look like a military tank accompanied by a caption that said, "We shall fight every word of the way."42 On the other hand, PLO activists declare that "the revolutionary vanguard m u s t . . . awaken the Palestinian masses not by 'verbal propaganda' but by 'concrete example'. Armed struggle is the only way to awaken mass consciousness."43 The West Bank press has been less openly aggressive in style, although no less militant than the "exiled" Palestinian media. Israeli censorship and positive sumud are the major reasons for this diminished aggressiveness. Thus, Al-Fajars editor's statement that "since, in the shadow of occupation, the national press is unable to fulfill the task demanded of it fully... to mobilize the masses against the occupation, and the escalation of national activities.... We see our task... as reduced to the marginal minimum, since we are struggling against the occupation by means of words authorized by the censors."44 The Voice of Palestine, on the other hand, had no difficulty in citing Farouk Kaddoumi, the head of the PLO political department on July 2, 1977: "We cannot think of recognition [of Israel] because this would mean conceding a part of our lands. Our intermediate goal is the creation of an independent Palestinian state on all parts of the land that will be liberated. There have been similar developments in the world. In Vietnam for example, the Vietnamese decided on the creation of North Vietnam, and after ten years they liberated South Vietnam."45 As a result, the West Bank media often resort to symbolism and disguise in order to make their points. Indirect criticism of Israel may be found m A-Sha'ab's reports on road accidents in the West Bank and East Jerusalem during the 1970s. News of accidents where Israeli cars and Arab victims were involved appeared ostentatiously in the front page. The reporting conveyed the impression that only accidents of this type occur, insinuating a purposeful and systematic Israeli policy of hurting the Arab population. 46 Another form of disguised political commentary appears in press items that do not have news value in the West. A striking example is the political use of eulogies and funeral announcements. In April 1973, three PLO leaders were killed by Israeli agents in Beirut. Among them was Kamal Nasr, a wellknown journalist and activist from the West Bank village of Bir Zayt. AlFajars editorial on April 14 stated that "they died because they loved their

60

Mass Communications

homeland and were willing to die for it.... Mothers of Palestine, do not weep over the deaths of heroes, for their deaths will bring about the growth of other men who will follow them." Following announcements put in the press by Nasr's family, hundreds of condolence advertisements began to appear in all West Bank newspapers, published by Arab notables and organizations. Phrases such as "sacrificed himself for the nation," "the great warrior," "Palestine's slain" were included in these advertisements, thereby turning them into large-scale printed demonstrations of identification with the Palestinian struggle. Although Israeli authorities dealt with these advertisements strictly, such demonstrations were repeated several times.47 The Palestinian press has responded harshly to deviations from sumud and alleged collaboration with Israel or with unpopular Arab leaders. In 1975, the "Eyes and Ears" section of A-Sha'ab, for example, published the following item concerning a local businessman who either sold land to Israelis or received money from Jordan: "A certain businessman from Salah ad-Din street made recently a deal which he will regret. Not only his family will reprimand him, also the community will react and perhaps take revenge."4" In another case, Al-Fajar reacted to an Israeli-supported initiative to send a delegation from the West Bank to Cairo following Sadat's visit to Jerusalem. On December 23,1977, an "important announcement" was published whereby the municipal councils of Ramallah, al-Birah, Beni Zayd, Betunya, and Sylwad stated that "all who participate in the delegation to Egypt represent only themselves" and reaffirmed that the PLO is the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinians. Thus, notwithstanding the similarities with Third World and specifically with Arab journalism—in terms of mobilization, factionalism, and affinity to language—the contents, style, and linguistic aspects of the press in the West Bank display a local character that reflects typical Palestinian nation-building dilemmas—the tensions between tradition and change, national identity and pan-Arabism, active resistance and sumud.

5

Control, Structure, and Organization

The Israeli censor usually is blamed for the precarious condition of the press in the West Bank. Indeed, severe military censorship coupled with the strict legal restriction and enforcement affect the production and distribution of newspapers, and this effect ranges from limitations on professional journalistic activity to the mere possession of forbidden material. The political affiliations of West Bank newspapers to Arab countries and organizations also have been criticized as a source of constraint that bears on the development of the press. In recent years, however, observers and participants alike have turned their attentions to the role of West Bank internal structures and control mechanisms in posing obstacles to the professional development of the press.

Israeli Control: Cat-and-Mouse In late September 1984, journalists Raymonda Tawil and Ibrahim Kar'in, owners of the Palestine Press Service and editors of the weekly Al-Awda, received a letter of warning signed by the Israeli minister of the interior to the effect that the magazine endangered the public peace. Commentators on Israeli radio and television explained that the support Al-Awda gave to the PLO and the probable PLO funding of the news agency and the magazine were the real reasons for the warning.1 The letter also summoned Tawil and Kar'in to appear on October 1 before the official in charge of newspaper licensing. The accused journalists denied the charges, mobilized the influence of the international press, and won the support of sympathetic Israeli peers, who demonstrated in Jerusalem.2 The fear that the agency and the magazine were about to be closed (as had been the case with the weekly

61

62

Mass Communications

Al-Shir'a, whose license was revoked in 1983 through a similar process and whose appeal to the High Court of Justice was denied) did not materialize this time. Tawil and Kar'in were warned again, this time in an official interview, and they returned to work, as if released on parole. Such actions taken by the Israeli government are not illegal nor completely arbitrary, nor are they the only sanction in the control repertoire. They are based on section 19 of the Press Ordinance of 1933—enacted by the British mandatory authorities and incorporated into Israeli law in 1948—which provided for governmental licensing, supervision, and regulation of the press and sanctioned administrative and penal measures for the violation of its provisions. The Defense Regulations (Emergency) of 1945 are a second legal basis for the control of the press. These regulations enlarged the powers of military censorship introduced by the British Mandate authorities in 1936. They authorized the censor to prohibit the publication of material prejudicial to the defense of the State, to public safety, and to public order. The regulations were incorporated into Israeli law and are still in effect, notwithstanding occasional controversy regarding their legitimacy and undemocratic character. They are the only laws specifically concerned with press publishing, and they apply equally to all newspapers published under Israeli jurisdiction, including the Palestinian press, which is based in Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem.3 The enforcement of the laws, however, is not identical for the Hebrew and the Arab press. Military censorship does not insist on Hebrew press compliance with the regulations, which stipulate that everything published be submitted for prior examination. A voluntary agreement signed in 1966 between the Israeli Press Editors Committee and the armed forces general staff defines criteria for censorship-press relations and stipulates that "censorship does not apply to political matters, opinion or comment or anything but security information liable to help the enemy or to harm national defense."4 Lists of topics that require prior approval are periodically supplied by the army to newspapers, and forbidden topics include the armed forces, security matters, the administration of the occupied territories, and issues specified in governmental regulations. Only articles about these issues are submitted in advance to the censor. A joint committee of representatives of the press and the military, chaired by a public figure, supervises the implementation of the agreement and serves as a court of appeals concerning the censors' decisions, thus satisfying a stipulation in the agreement that neither party will resort to legal sanctions nor bring its differences to court. Although deemed illegal by the government's attorney and by experts at the Ministry of Justice, this self-censorship mechanism has been fully accepted by the majority of Israeli newspaper editors.5 However, the agreement and its conveniences do not apply to publications that are not affiliated with the Editors Committee, such as the Hebrew weekly Haolam Hazeh

Control, Structure, and Organization

63

(This World), the Hebrew daily Hadashot (News) and all Arab newspapers published in East Jerusalem. All such publications must abide by the letter of the law as represented by the military censor. Arab editors must submit all material meant for publication, including articles, news items, pictures, advertisements, bereavement notices, poems, and crossword puzzles twice nightly to the censor's office, first at 8 PM. and again at 10 P.M. when the first batch is returned to the editors. 6 They pick up the second batch of approved material at midnight or later and thus are constantly forced to work within impossible deadlines. Entire items or some parts may be censored, and empty spaces indicating what has been cut out may not be used. Instead, the Arabic word na'atader (sorry) often replaces censored editorials. Uncertainty prevails regarding censorship criteria. One former editor of Al-Fajar declared that "we haven't any definite guidelines. We know that provocative, libelous and anti-security articles are strictly forbidden. But what is considered provocative?"7 This vagueness has been admitted by high-level Israeli military administrators. 8 "Censorship is not mathematics," a former military spokesman admitted to Israeli journalist Amnon Kapeliouk. "Different people sitting in the censor's office have different subjective attitudes. Some stories would pass one censor and not another. A man's mood, whether he slept well or had a fight with his wife, probably has something to do with it too."9 Thus, in addition to the unequal standing of the Hebrew and Arab press, it has often happened that the censor allows one newspaper and forbids another to publish similar material or changes his mind on different days. The November 5,1982, edition of Al-Fajar, for example, featured a detailed account of a curfew imposed by Israeli forces on Dheisheh camp a few days earlier, including a description of arrests and massive interrogation. Three months earlier, the censor did not permit Al-Shir'a to print a story about the arrest of the parents of three girls at Dheisheh who had not paid fines imposed on them by a military court for demonstrating. 10 The arrest of an al-Birah town counsellor and his release eighty-eight days later was not censored when submitted by Al-Fajar's editor on the night of December 30,1982. A similar notice submitted by Al-Fajar on May 25,1983, on the release of three Jenin area residents, was not permitted. Moreover, although empty spaces may not be used to indicate what was censored, AlFajar was permitted to publish a full report of the press censorship situation on December 24, 1982, in its English edition and on December 31 of the same year in its Arabic edition's editorial. According to that report, 36.1 percent of 1,079 original articles in the English weekly magazine submitted to the censor between April and December 1982 was rejected completely or entirely censored; 25 percent was partially excised, in some cases so severely that the resulting articles were unusable. Only 39 percent of the orig-

64

Mass Communications

inal material was accepted as submitted. The perceptions of the Palestinian press by the Israeli censors is nevertheless unambiguous. An affidavit submitted by the censorship authorities to the High Court ofJustice in August 1982 stated that the goal of the press and of the PLO were similar, which is to destroy Israel, to withhold recognition of the national existence of the Jewish people and their national rights, and to establish a Palestinian state in place of the state of Israel. According to the affidavit, The newspaper takes both the goal and the methods [that is, terror, "the armed struggle"] upon itself and acts within its journalistic means to influence readers in that direction.... Violent struggle . . . is not the coincidental outcome . . . of the material published in the newspaper, but it is the declared aim of the newspaper according to its own testimony.... Thus, for example, when a news story is published about a decision that has been made to hold a strike in Beirut, Hebron, or Nablus, that is not the simple reporting of a fact, but actually instruction to carry out the strike, a demand to strike, authorized by the decision-making bodies.... It should be judged as a call for action published under the pretense of being a newspaper report and it should be treated just like a pamphlet inciting to strike. [Likewise,] the style of the death announcements... refers to the person who was killed and his activities as a national example which should be imitated. The announcement of the death is presented "with pride" and a feeling that one has been honored.... Therefore one cannot consider those death notices as simple announcements on the part of the bereaved family, but rather as a link in an organized framework and habitual technique for the mobilization of the population and community activity."

Five major categories of content censorship are outstanding. The most rigidly controlled items are local news, including reactions to the autonomy plan or news on settlements and the seizure of land. Second is activities of the PLO, such as terrorist bombings, arrests of suspects, and demolition of houses belonging to them and to their families. Third is news on Palestinian resistance, including the closing of schools, demonstrations, and deportation of Palestinian leaders. Finally, newspapers face less restriction in reporting events in the Arab world (the fourth category) and international affairs (the fifth).12 These censorship classifications are supported by a statistical analysis of the frequency with which different content categories were censored in four West Bank newspapers between May 1982 and April 1983. The most frequently censored items concerned the PLO and Palestinians, the Lebanon war, Israeli coercive measures, Palestinian demonstrations and strikes, West Bank universities, and Jewish settlements. Topics less affected by censorship included government-population relationships, land ownership, water, vigilante violence, the Golan Heights, censorship, death notices, taxation, holy

Control, Structure, and Organization

65

places, trade unions, Village Leagues, Israeli demonstrations, foreign support for Palestinians, Israeli-Egyptian relations, the Arab League, Rabbi Kahane's activities, and prisons.13 Lack of compliance with the Press Ordinance of 1933 and with the Defense Regulations of 1945 often results in warnings and actual closing of newspapers either indefinitely, as in the case of Al-Shir'a, or temporarily. ASha'ab and Al-Fajar were closed for a month in February 1982 for running foul of the censors, and Al-Quds was closed for five days in July of the same year when a death notice referred to a Palestinian who "fell" in the Lebanese war. These legal mechanisms represent just one side of a double-edged censorship system. The other side is military order no. 50, issued under the Press and Publications Law of 1967, which allows the authorities to limit and revoke permits or to forbid the distribution of newspapers in the West Bank. In practice, this means that even after a newspaper has satisfied the requirements of the Ministry of the Interior and of the military censor, as stipulated by one arm of the system, it still may not be permitted by the other arm to reach its readers outside annexed Jerusalem for as long as the military government may decide. Thus, the Israeli Labor party's Davar (Issue) reported in the spring of 1982 on new restricting orders concerning the distribution of newspapers in the West Bank and Gaza, which included a daily inspection of newspaper parcels and confiscation by the military administration, if deemed necessary. The orders also limited distribution permits to three months instead of one year, and permits were subject to instant cancellation. The rejection of these terms by newspaper editors of the Palestinian press led to the discontinuation of distribution outside East Jerusalem. According to the report, "taxi drivers and transport drivers from East Jerusalem were warned not to try taking parcels of Arab newspapers to the West Bank. If they should do so, they would be taken to court and lose their driver's license."14 Newspaper distribution in the West Bank was resumed in March 1983, following an Israeli high court ruling. In addition to clarifying the legal and coercive provisions endured by the West Bank press, this report made clear why all Palestinian newspapers have chosen East Jerusalem as the location of their editorial offices. The Israeli annexation of the formerlyJordanian-controlled part of the city has provided the Palestinian press with at least some protection through civil legislation and through the courts. Otherwise the press would have been totally dependent on the military government's arbitrary authority. Additional measures employed to control the press in the West Bank are deportation, travel bans, house arrests, detention, and harassment.15 Notwithstanding the fact that only one newspaper editor was actually deported (Ali al-Khatib, following his aggressive editorials and involvement in the organization of a petition against Israel in 1974), travel bans were imposed on

66

Mass Communications

a large number of journalists. In August 1980 Ma'amun al-Saiyyed, Akram Haniyya, and Bashir Barghutty, the editors of Al-Fajar, A-Sha'ab, and A-Tali'a respectively, were confined to their homes and were not allowed to go to their newspaper offices in Jerusalem. The confinement orders were extended several times for six months each until they were lifted on Barghutty in December 1982. The other orders were still in effect at the time of this writing. A similar six month travel ban was imposed on Hanna Saniura and Mabham Kreisheh of Al-Fajar in October 1982; Raymonda Tawil, owner of the Palestine Press Service, was under house arrest between August and December 1976 and has been under several thirty-day administrative detentions since 1978. In addition, West Bank journalists have had restricted access to different locations and events, which thus further limits them in the conduct of their profession. Journalist certificates issued by the newspapers or by the Arab Journalists Association have not been honored and obvious reasons prevented Palestinian journalists from applying and from being protected by the Israeli Journalists Association. Control also is maintained of the possession of printed material; here an almost absurd situation prevails. In November 1982, for example, a military court imposed a one-year suspended jail sentence and the equivalent of a one hundred dollar fine on Sam'an Khourrie, editor of Al-Fajar s English edition, for possessing two copies of a magazine published by a radical faction of the PLO in Beirut. He was detained for seventeen days in solitary confinement. In April 1983 an exhibit of Palestinian publications at the Institute for Training of Medical Workers in al-Birah was closed, the organizers were punished, and the institute itself was shut down for two weeks. Several months later a Hebron newspaper distributor was fined for possessing several copies of Al-Biadar-al-Siasi, which was published in East Jerusalem. It is interesting to note that M-Itihad, a newspaper published by the Israeli Communist party, may be sold and possessed in Beth Hanina, a Jerusalem Arab suburb, but is forbidden across the road, which is outside the municipal boundaries of the city. Thus, materials banned in the West Bank are available to its residents when they enter Jerusalem, which is within the official boundaries of the State of Israel. Most of the material is easily accessible to all readers in libraries, bookstores and on newsstands. Librarians at the Mount Scopus campus of the Hebrew University, for example, report that many readers come from the West Bank to read the available material, and newsstand owners in Jerusalem have numerous regular customers from the West Bank. Even considering the censors' struggle against alleged incitement, this situation poses a serious dilemma for Israeli democracy. If control is ineffective, then why maintain it? If effectiveness is to be achieved, does it mean that in order to prevent West Bank residents from reading, producing, distributing, and possessing "dangerous" material, censorship must be imposed openly within the State of Israel?

Control, Structure, and Organization

67

Arab Control: A Brotherly Grip Limitations on the freedom of expression, pressure, and censorship are not an exclusive product of Israeli occupation policies. Governmental control of the media is a well-known practice in Arab countries. Politicization and political patronization of the press are quite common in the Third World and occur through the application of legal mechanisms, indirect influence, or sheer coercion.16 In countries where the mobilization model prevails, such as Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Algeria, the Sudan, and South Yemen, the mass media are directly guided and censored by the government. Criticism of policies is not permitted, the sanctity of leaders is promoted, and popular support is mobilized for the government's political, economic, and social programs. In other Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Tunisia, and some of the Gulfs sheikdoms and emirates, a loyalist authoritarian model has developed. Notwithstanding the fact that the press is for the most part privately owned, it is controlled through legal authority and financial benefits and through susceptibility to governmental pressure. In such countries, government influence is great, but government pressures are indirect and subtle and are reinforced by a mechanism of anticipatory self-guidance used by editors and journalists. In the more decentralized, diverse press model, as represented by the pre-1982 Lebanese religious, political, and ethnic press, factionalism accounts for considerable amounts of pressure exercised mainly through coercion and violence. In addition, the West Bank press had intimate acquaintance with restrictions and pressure during the 1948-1967 period ofJordanian rule when the censorship and harassment repertoire was similar to the methods employed by Israel. During the 1949-1950 period of the Jordanian military administration, journalists were arrested and newspapers were closed for publishing critical articles.'7 The same practices prevailed after the West Bank's annexation into the Hashemite kingdom, particularly after the passage in September 1953 of the Press and Publications Law, which authorized the government to license newspapers and magazines and to refuse or cancel the license if a publication "threatened the national existence" or security, infringed on "constitutional principles of the kingdom," harmed the "national feeling," or offended public decency. Publication of news about the royal family was not allowed, unless specifically approved; items defaming religion, flouting public morality, or revealing unauthorized military or secret information were strictly forbidden.18 Filastin was closed for two days and the Bethlehem monthly Al-Mahad (The Cradle) for one month in 1953; in early 1955, six newspapers and magazines were closed for a period of six months, and in May 1967 the licenses of all Jordanian and West Bank newspapers were revoked under the guise of a government-initiated press reorganization.19 Severe restrictions also were imposed on the printing and distribution of newspapers and other publications. Available records disclose

68

Mass Communications

the seizure of printing equipment, the confiscation of newspapers, and interrogations and threats toward drivers who distributed the newspapers in the West Bank and reprimands directed at the intelligence service for failing to uncover and prevent the printing and distribution of illegal material.20 Arab control of the West Bank press did not stop after 1967. Financial and political pressures have replaced legal controls. Although it is difficult to present clear-cut evidence for the existence of financial pressures, it has not been denied that Al-Quds, for example, has been receiving Jordanian funds and that when this newspaper reappeared in 1968, it was indirectly helped by Israel. Political opponents maintain that the occupation authorities have supplied funds; others say that the authorities helped Al-Quds by referring advertisers. It also has been common knowledge that Al-Fajar has been supported by PLO funds. Political pressures by Arab parties have been applied in the selection of senior press personnel. Al-Fajar is an outstanding example. Under PLO influence, it was initially founded in 1972 by three Palestinians. High school teacher Yusuf (Joe) Nasr was the license holder and editor in chief; political activist Jamil Hamad was the managing editor; and Ramallah-born, New York-educated Paul Ajluni was registered as owner. In 1974 Nasr disappeared mysteriously, never to be found again. Some tried to implicate Hamad in the affair. He was arrested for six months and released for lack of evidence. Hamad has maintained that the responsibility for Nasr's disappearance lies with Jordanian loyalists from the Hebron area, led by the late mayor and chieftain Sheik Mohammed Ali al-Ja'abari, who had been fiercely attacked in print by Nasr.21 Following this event, Hanna Saniura, a pharmacist and one of Ajluni's relatives, took over as editor in chief, and Mohammed Batrawi replaced Hamad as managing editor. He resigned following political disagreement and was succeeded by Bashir Barghutty, a senior communist activist, who was removed from office in early 1977 in an anticommunist move by Ajluni, probably on behalf of the PLO. Barghutty's efforts to turn the newspaper into a communist publication did not succeed because the PLO rapprochement with Saudi Arabia, which is anticommunist, during the Arab summit conferences in Ryadh and Cairo in the autumn of 1976 meant that the PLO had to choose between Saudi Arabian money and Barghutty. The next editor, Ma'amun al-Saiyyed, was appointed in February 1977 and left after being accused of financial misdeeds. Ziad Abu Ziad, a lawyer who replaced Saiyyed in 1980, was labeled too "dovish" toward Israel and resigned in 1983- Since then, this position has changed hands regularly.22 Arab control of Palestinian broadcasting has been even stricter than control of the press. With the exception of Lebanon, all broadcasting services in Arab countries operate under governmental auspices. Moreover, the various degrees of autonomy enjoyed by Palestinian radio have not obscured the fact that it was always a host government who established, expanded, suspended, reinstated, and halted broadcasts whenever such steps were de-

Control, Structure, and Organization

69

manded by its interests. In the early 1960s broadcasting personnel of the host countries planned and executed the services with minimal Palestinian participation. During the mid-1960s, when the share of Palestinian staff increased, broadcasts still depended on facilities and policies of governmental systems. Thus, Radio Baghdad's daily "Voice of Palestine Corner," broadcast since July 1966, was supervised and prepared by the Iraqi PLO branch, but Radio Baghdad shifted the program around its schedule according to political expedience. The efforts made by the PLO in the early 1970s to consolidate its leading position in the Palestinian struggle were countered by even stricter measures. Thus, the tension between the PLO and the Jordanian government in the summer of 1970, which led to the Black September bloodshed, was incompatible with Egyptian support of the Rogers' plan for peace in the Middle East in which Jordan was expected to perform a key role. The Egyptian government did not hesitate to suspend broadcasts on July 28, 1970, after two Palestinian stations operating from Cairo criticized the government's position.23 Host government control remained as strict even after the PLO acquired some independent transmission capacity. A Chinese-supplied portable transmitter has been active from Dar'a in southern Syria since fall 1970; PLO broadcasts concentrated on attacking King Hussein's regime, with the obvious blessing of the Syrian government. In September 1973 a series of meetings between representatives of Egypt and Jordan took place, followed by a summit meeting in Cairo in which some of their differences were resolved, which allowed for military and logistical coordination in preparation for the upcoming October 1973 war. When the Dar'a-based Voice of Palestine continued to attack the Jordanian kingdom, the station was summarily closed down by the Syrian authorities, who confiscated the equipment and jailed the station director and five of the staff.24 They were released several days later, but the station did not reopen until 1975, and then in Lebanon. Its operation was discontinued again in February 1977 by the Syrian Army."

Structural and Professional Controls: Development and Underdevelopment Although pressured by Israeli censorship and Arab interests, the Palestinian press in the West Bank has its own internal control. Indeed, structural and professional limitations account for its shortcomings as much as do (previously discussed) external factors. Together with evidence on the structural modernization of the press, one should recognize the inadequate development of the profession. It is ironic, even paradoxical, that the Palestinian press under Israeli rule has enjoyed a degree of prosperity it had never previously experienced. The

70

Mass Communications

1967 war—which made the Jordanian annexation and integrationist policies obsolete—and the subsequent occupation of the West Bank by Israel seem to have triggered a multifaceted process of modernization of the press, as expressed by changes in the quantity and quality ofWest Bank publications.26 This process is represented, first, by the growth in the number of newspapers of various types. The current supply of three dailies, six weeklies, five biweekly and monthly magazines and a considerable number of sporadic publications, newsletters, and bulletins indicate a significant development compared with the Jordanian period and with the initial years of occupation. A second indication of modernization is the pattern typical of this trend of growth in which an initial phase of sporadic, tentative publication has been followed by regularity and increasing frequency. Thus, after two months of publication in weekly format, Al-Fajar became a daily newspaper. It took a longer period for Al-Usbua'-al-Jadid (three years) and Al-Awda (two years) to shift from sporadic to weekly publication. Al-Biadar-al-Siasi appeared monthly during 1981-1982 until it became a weekly magazine; AlFajar-al-Adabi changed from a literary section to a monthly and then to a weekly format. The fact that most dailies as well as other types of publications increased in the number of pages is a further characteristic of modernization trends. In addition, a growing variety in content has been typical of the development of the press in the West Bank. Although the newspapers still feature little differentiation compared to the press in the West, the publication of special sections for women, students, trade unions, and others is an indication of this trend. Specialization also has been taking place, as illustrated by the case of Al-Fajar-al-Adabi (above), by the split of Al-Biadar into two magazines—one literary and one political—and by the publication of AlFajar s English and Hebrew editions. Technological modernization has been another component of the process, as represented by the introduction of offset printing in Al-Quds, and of full or partial color printing in Al-Awda and Al-Biadar. The establishment of photography departments in some newspapers and of archives in most of them is a further indication of development. This development trend and efforts to maintain modern management practices—as illustrated by the basically stable three-tier organization of management (owner, editor in chief, managing editor)—have not been matched, however, by the parallel development of a professional infrastructure. Palestinian journalist Said al-Ghazali said in an interview to the Israeli press that the contents and formats of the West Bank newspapers indicate the ignorance of the most basic rules of the printed press. "Journalists are hired on the basis of their political views or social connections. Most of them are untrained. Their writing is guided by personal views and instigation against opponents, rather than by integrity and true facts."27

Control, Structure, and Organization

71

Thus, the production of newspapers in the West Bank is done day by day behind an uncheering facade of low circulation, little professional personnel, and poor journalistic standards. The total number of professional staff employed in the production of the daily newspapers in the mid-1970s included no more than ten journalists and five administrative workers, so that any single edition was written and edited by five or six persons.2" In the 1980 A-Dustur symposium, Akram Haniyya, the editor of ASha'ab, stated that "the number of full-time professional journalists in all the occupied territories since 1967 is no more than fifteen."29 Moonlighting has been common practice in the West Bank newspapers, as illustrated by the large number of teachers, civil servants, lawyers, and accountants who engage in journalism in their free time. Newspapers do not hire qualified field reporters. The bulk of local reporting is provided by newspaper distributors who obviously have no journalistic training. These agents, in return for a sales percentage, are required to report on events in their towns and villages. Such reports, sometimes in very poor language, are then "translated" in the newsroom into journalistic style. One such distributor interviewed for this study described how one can become a reporter. There is no ladder which one can climb on and achieve this position. It depends on one's connections inside a newspaper. They check who you are, your social and economic position. Also it is important that you do not demand much money and that they don't have anyone else. I may become a reporter but I don't know when and h o w . . . . You know, I shall keep selling my papers even if I become a reporter. w

Sometimes, the West Bank newspapers use the services of news agencies, in most cases indirectly, through Israeli colleagues. (It is not uncommon for censorship-ridden Palestinian editors to supply information to Israeli colleagues and then publish it as quotations from the Israeli press.) Thus, often it has happened that items on demonstrations and other events occurring at a distance of several hundred yards from a newspaper's offices absurdly travel first to Reuters' or UP's newsrooms abroad, and then to Tel Aviv, before they reach the West Bank press in edited and abridged form. Salaries of West Bank journalists reflect the low level of professional journalism found in the Third World, particularly in Arab countries.31 Salaries are extremely low, and working conditions do not provide benefits or security. "An experienced senior editor," according to one of our interviewees, "is paid a monthly salary which never exceeds 2,000-2,500 Israeli Shekels [in 1982, the equivalent of I85-100)]. 32 "They hire you and after six months you find yourself fired, so that they will not have to raise your salary or give you tenure."33 In 1976, following a disagreement between the owner oiM-Quds and the professional staff regarding the publication of advertisements for the municipal election, the editor in chief dismissed the entire journalistic

72

Mass Communications

staff. "The eleven editors," stated one of the journalists directly involved, "including Sheik Yusuf Najar, a member of the High Islamic Council, who had been the most outstanding writer in the newspaper, were replaced on the same night. Had they been printers, it would have taken weeks to replace them." 34 The view that such circumstances do not enhance morale, motivation, or esprit de corps is held unanimously by West Bank journalists, who also protest the lack of ethical standards in reporting. Crosschecking for example, is unknown, and use of plain gossip or slander is common practice, as illustrated by the following story. In 1981 A-Sha'ab published a story accusing one of Nablus' richest and influential citizens of counterfeiting U.S. dollars. He sued the newspaper, demanding as compensation the astronomic sum of two million Jordanian dinars [1 dinar=$2.5). Lacking solid evidence, except rumors, A-Sha'ab asked West Bank mayors and other dignitaries to interfere. Only after long negotiations, the slandered notable agreed to withdraw his legal claim in return for A-Sha'ab's public denial and apologies.1''

In another case, when a worker fell into a grinding machine in a quarry, another West Bank newspaper reported that "the owner, seeing the worker approaching the machine, waited until he got in and then switched it on. The poor man fell inside and his body was crushed." In spite of the fact that it became clear the next day that this had been a real accident and that the worker did not die, but was only slightly injured, a family feud developed. The quarry owner was charged with attempted murder. "In such a case," said our source, "twenty denials and apologies will not clear the owner from the worker's family's vendetta."36

Circulation, Distribution, and Consumption: Tradition and Modernity The convergence of tradition and modernity is typical of most aspects of the development of the mass media in Palestinian society. There are no reliable figures on the number of newspaper copies printed, sold, or returned in the West Bank. Journalists, editors, and business managers refrain from revealing official figures, which may hurt relationships with financial sponsors or, according to Al-Biadar's editor, Jack Hazmo, provoke income tax authorities.37 Some West Bank newspaper personnel tend to exaggerate, never citing exact figures. There is full consensus, however, among journalists and newspaper sales agents that Al-Quds enjoys the widest circulation. Estimates of the exact figure vary between 30,000, in the opinion of its editor's supporters, and 10,000, as expressed by others. The estimated circulation of Al-Fajar is

Control, Structure, and Organization

73

3,000-5,000 copies; opinions vary about A-Sha'ab's circulation, which is put between 10,000 (during the Lebanese war) and 1,500-2,000 copies. Thus, the estimated total number of daily newspapers copies displays a range between 15,000 and 45,000. The lower figure seems to be more reliable. Among the weekly magazines, A-Tali'a enjoys the largest circulation, which is estimated at some 5,000 weekly copies. The circulation of pro-PLO weeklies is lower, with Al-Awda at 1,500 copies and Al-Mitak at 1,000. Communist Al-Kitab circulation is estimated at 600 copies, the now defunct AShir'a at 2,500,Al-Biadar at 3,000-5,000, and Al-Biadar-al-Siasi at 1,500. The West Bank is well supplied with radio and television receivers. The latest official figures reveal that in 1983 radio receivers were present in more than 82 percent and black and white television sets in more than 67 percent of West Bank households, while the ownership of color television sets was still limited to 8.4 percent of the households. Ownership of radio and television has increased considerably in a relatively short period of time. Television ownership in 1983 was more than six times what it had been ten years earlier. As in most Third World societies, the rate of ownership of television sets is larger in urban households. Nevertheless, TV sets were present in more than 60 percent of rural households in 1983, and the rate of growth in ownership exceeded that of urban communities. 3 " This may be taken as fair evidence of the modernization process of the West Bank. On the other hand, the West Bank press is distributed through retail outlets, at newsstands, or by children in the streets. There is no sophisticated distribution system, nor is there a subscription system. Rather, distribution contracts are signed with agents who employ subagents, such as stationery shopkeepers or newsstand and bookstore owners. Newspapers are sold in these shops and by children in the streets. The entire system is based on percentage deals. A very small amount of research has been conducted in the West Bank on audience preferences and specific media consumption patterns. The reasons for this insufficiency range from those applicable to the entire Arab world and to most developing countries, such as lack of funds, low priority, and lack of knowhow (in addition to the low level of institutionalization of West Bank media), to specific problems created by occupation, including limited access to interviewees and a basic mistrust among Palestinians of anyone who asks questions on delicate matters.39 The information supplied by our informants depicted some of the major characteristics of media consumption patterns in the West Bank. Loyalties to a particular newspaper or broadcasting station are apparently determined by political inclinations. Al-Quds, which caters basically to the more moderate older audience, is not usually read by the radicals of the younger generation. Otherwise, says one newsstand owner, "it is common practice to buy Al-Quds for 1.5 shekel, to exchange it half an hour later for Al-Fajar and after another half an hour to return it and take A-Sha'ab.

74

Mass Communications

Upon the return of the last newspaper I pay them back half a shekel."40 This multiple-channel exposure pattern reflects the convergence of tradition and modernity, and it also suggests a high correlation of factionalism and lack of credibility in the West Bank press. This pattern is typical of the electronic media, too, as indicated by most of the sources for this study. A veteran teacher in Ramallah, for example, says that "every morning between 6 and 7, I listen to three radio news bulletins: the BBC, Jordan and Israel; then I discuss the news with friends before making up my mind on what really happened. Most of my acquaintances do the same."4' Insofar as television is concerned, prime-time audiences float from the Arabic news on Israel television between 7:30 and 8:00 PM. to the Jordanian television news at 8:00 P.M. and back to the "Mabat" Hebrew news from Israel at 9:00 P.M., where visual materials on the West Bank, unavailable in other broadcasts, is screened.42 Tradition and modernity met again when wives and children wanted to watch "Dallas" on Jordan TV, while the men were interested in the "Mabat" news bulletin, which used to be transmitted at the same hour on Israel TV. One frequent solution to the conflict, adopted mostly by Hebrew speakers, was that the men listened to the Hebrew news soundtrack broadcast by Galei Zahal, the Israeli Army station, while the women and children watched "Dallas." Whenever an item concerning the West Bank was broadcast in the "Mabat" program, traditional authority was applied by the men, and television channels were switched.43

The Combinations of Control Mechanisms: The Perpetuation of Dependence The need for social and political channels of expression coupled with private ownership and financial difficulties are typical of the West Bank press. Thus, a relatively large number of low-circulation newspapers are published in a poor advertising market; only Al-Quds has achieved a significant business volume, mainly through the publication of funeral notices, society lifesponsored copy, and the sale of printing services to West Bank and Israeli clients. As all newspapers are, at least formally, privately owned, they cannot afford to hire qualified personnel, and the result is small-scale, amateurish journalistic ventures. This view is supported by editors and journalists in the West Bank. Akram Haniyya stated that "since the owners . . . have a traditional outlook, the profession of journalist has become unattractive."44 Ma'amun al-Saiyyed remarked that in addition to the hardships of occupation, many journalists emigrated due to "the inability of local newspapers to pay an appropriate salary, or at least one that would permit them to live without taking on other work from other institutions."4,5 Said al-Ghazali was more blatant in

Control, Structure, and Organization

75

rejecting the argument of external influence. "The real reasons for the backward situation of the press," he said, "are organizational chaos, a narcissistic approach, self-interest and opportunism." 46 A senior journalist interviewed for this study expressed his doubts whether present professional structure and standards would allow for a better performance, even if all censorship restrictions were lifted.4" The fragmentation, the lack of adequate professional standards, and the weak economic structure of the West Bank press resemble the press model prevailing throughout most of the Arab world.4" This model, in turn, behaves in accordance with the problematic development of modern social institutions in Third World countries, which have been characterized by a conflict between the ability to mobilize resources and the inability to utilize them rationally due to the lack of adequate traditions and infrastructures.49 This pattern is expressed with particular severity in the West Bank, where even the ability to mobilize available resources is extremely limited, particularly given the absence of a strong professional infrastructure or a highly developed ethical code. In addition, internal political divisions contribute to the institutional weakness of the West Bank press. This is illustrated by the already traditional animosity between Al-Quds and the more radically inclined dailies and periodicals and by the dynamics of political partisanship among West Bank journalists. In September 1973 journalist Mohammed Abu Shilbaya started publishing a weekly newspaper that supported West Bank participation in the Israeli municipal election in Jerusalem and called for peaceful coexistence, mutual recognition between Israel and Palestine, and open borders. The publisher ceased publication in November of the same year, but the event, according to some observers, represented a split in the relations of Abu Shilbaya and his few supporters with both Joe Nasr, whose Al-Fajar backed the PLO, and pro-Jordanian Mahmud Abu-Zuluf's/\/-