The BBC reports that
rival Palestinian political factions Fatah and Hamas have reached agreement on a common political strategy to try to end a damaging power struggle.
However, the British taxpayer-funded television network, whose motto is “Nation Shall Speak Peace unto Nation,” wants to reassure you that the war will continue to the bitter end, because Hamas will never give up the fight to do away with Israel and the Israelis.
The BBC’s James Reynolds in Gaza says that the central point of the joint manifesto is the creation of a Palestinian state on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Traditionally that is one half of a two-state solution, but the existing drafts of the deal make no mention of the second half of this solution - the state of Israel.
This omission is deliberate, our correspondent says.
While some have argued that this means Hamas tacitly accepts Israel’s right to exist, it is becoming clear that that is not how Hamas sees it.
Hamas negotiators have told the BBC that the entire state of Israel has been built on occupied Palestinian land.
They believe that a Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza is a first step - not a final step.
They believe that future generations of Palestinians will reclaim all their historic homeland. And that, in the end, there will be no room for what is now the Jewish state of Israel, our correspondent says.
As the watchdog for Middle East reporting CAMERA noted in October 2001, the BBC worked hard after 9/11 to insinuate that there was a causal link between those attacks and the situation between Israel and the Palestinians. They noted that the BBC
has a global audience of well over 150 million people, with the Web site, TV and radio broadcasts delivering commentary and analysis to the world round the clock. It is, therefore, significant that throughout its coverage of the [9/11] terror attacks and their aftermath, the BBC has, in effect, played the role of PR agent for the Palestinians and the Arab world, echoing their anti-Israel line and doing damage control for the Palestinians’ tarnished image.
Nice to see that five years and many Islamist nihilst butcheries later, the Beeb is still making the moral case for the proud butchers of Hamas, and that it is making every effort to boost the morale of Hamas’s supporters.
2 comments ↓
I did not see this on BBC–and context is so important, but from your description I actually think you may be getting too upset about this one. I am happy to hear that the BBC explained what the word “occupation” almost always means in Hamas statements–the entire enchillada “from the river to the sea”, as they like to put it. The usual practice of just about everybody in MSM is to say something like the PLO or Hamas or whoever object “to Israel’s occupation of territories” whereupon Mr. or Ms. Average Viewer thinks “if those stubborn Israelis would only get out of the West Bank there would be peace.”
Anyone who’s read any history since, oh, 1967, or key documents like the Hamas Charter can find “occupation” spelled out as “the 1948 lands” or “all the land from the river to the sea.” The BBC always (maybe conveniently) lags behind in their understanding of everything. It wasn’t till Arafat died that they could start saying “Duh, maybe he was not such a nice guy to his people…” and they are late on this. But better late than never.
Stephanie:
In my present frame of mind (it’ll pass, but I claim blogger’s license), there’s no such thing as being too upset at the BBC, because the cumulative effect of their reporting from the Middle East is that they have poisoned the well. But I take your point. It is, relatively speaking, a good thing that they spelled out what “occupation” means to Hamas.
In a BBC report later today, the point was made more clearly:
“Hamas has, of course, still not renounced its aim of creating a state on all the territories of historic Palestine prior to the creation of Israel, which in effect means destroying the Jewish state.”
That piece was signed by a reporter named Magdi Abdelhadi, whose title is BBC Arab affairs analyst.
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