All the News Not Fit to Print, Danny Rubinstein

Opinion, June 2003, Al-Jazeerah.info

30/06/2003

Ha’aretz & PMC

The media are by nature not cut out for routine reporting, and the bloody confrontations of the intifada provide plenty examples of this. In the Israeli press terror attacks are given very broad coverage, but it is rare for example to find reports of seaside hotels that continue to remain vacant because tourists are not coming.

These things are known. We don't read daily reports about Israelis that are not traveling to Jerusalem or about immigrants that are not coming. We know security checks at the entrance of shopping malls and other crowded locations cause anxiety and considerably diminish the number of customers willing to enter.

Similarly, we scarcely read about routine life on the Palestinian side. We can read daily reports about IDF activities on the West Bank and in Gaza, about raids and killings, the discovery of suicide bombers and their explosive devices and about arrests. But we will never see a news report stating something like: "The residents of Qalqilya were again unable to leave their town yesterday because of checkpoints, and consequently people were unable to go to work, patients did not receive medical care, and students were unable to attend school.

At the height of the previous intifada (1988-1989), the Israeli military government gradually shut down the schools on the West Bank and in Gaza that became focal points of riots. At first, the media widely reported this - Israeli and Palestinian spokespeople reported that following an order by the military governor, high schools schools were closed in Nablus, Bir Zeit university, Abu Dis College, and so on. After all the schools in territories were closed down, there were no more reports. What is there to report?

The fact that hundreds of thousands of high schools and university students on the West Bank and in Gaza were not in school became routine and the media had nothing new to tell us, despite the fact that the daily plight of families that had to occupy their children at home all the time created a terrible social predicament, to say nothing of the damage to the education caused to an entire generation.

The routine of the intifada on the Palestinian side is much worse than that on the Israeli side - but because very little is ever reported, it is forgotten. A little over a year ago, during the period of Operation Defensive Shield, almost all roads on the West Bank were gradually closed to Palestinian traffic. The fact that a Palestinian had to walk, sometimes over mountain trails, or to take twisting, dirt roads and wait hours at checkpoints just to get to work, school, a clinic or to visit family members became a routine matter that did warrant any special attention.

A woman from Gaza that married a man from Ramallah could not attend her brother's wedding or her father's funeral in Gaza. In fact, she has been unable to visit Gaza for close to four years.

The line at the interior ministry's office in East Jerusalem is also a matter of routine. Dozens of features were written about the multitudes waiting for hours from the night before, the fistfights, the bribes paid for a place in line - but nothing happened and the reports stopped.

For the same reason, there are no longer any reports about the Silvana chocolate company that closed down in Ramallah a few months ago and about the plastics company owned by the Ramah family that is almost completely paralyzed. An unemployment rate of over 50 percent is par for the course for life on the West Bank.

Even those who want to get away and take a vacation with relatives in Jordan have not been able to do so for almost three years because the Jordanians, as a matter of routine, allow hardly any Palestinians across their frontier.

The disparity between the Israeli and Palestinian routine was reflected in the pictures of the evacuations of settlers from the Yitzhar outpost ten days ago. For the Israeli media, it was an event of unrivaled drama, of brother clashing with brother - all because of a mobile home and a couple of tents, with petitions to the High Court of Justice in the background.

The Palestinian routine, on the other hand, is one of entire neighborhoods torn down in Rafa, Khan-Yunis and Beit Hanoun. Dozens of houses blown up on the West Bank and in Gaza and large agricultural areas cleared and plowed over because they might hide terrorists. And the High Court of Justice has routinely stopped getting involved.

Earth, a planet hungry for peace

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03).

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03).