June 22, 2002

Dear NPR News,

The Q&A between Weekend Edition Saturday host Scott Simon and News Analyst Dan Schorr about the Israeli Palestinian conflict contained factual errors, distortions and a great deal of one-sidedness.

Simon kicked off the session:

SIMON: "Of course there were new suicide attacks in Israel this week and Israel responded by reoccupying Palestinian territories and accelerating the construction of a security fence that's supposed to seal off Israel from the West Bank."

Of course there were not new suicide attacks in Israel this week. The July 18 and 19 attacks which claimed 26 Israeli lives including a number of children, both took place in the occupied West Bank, the first near the settlement of Gilo south of Jerusalem, the second in the settlement of French Hill east of Jerusalem. Both of these settlements lie within the territories occupied by Israel in 1967, and both are illegal under international law. Neither of these settlements is in Jerusalem, but even if they were, Jerusalem itself should not be referred to as "Israel."

It is astonishing that where the entire international community has considered and rejected Israel's unilateral claim to this occupied territory, NPR continues to casually apportion this or that bit of occupied Palestinian land to Israel with barely a thought. This is a gift to Israel's public relations effort to convince the world that land seized by force in violation of international law is a natural and integral part of its territory.

Regarding the fence, Simon posed the question "Is the situation reaching a point where solution [sic] seems to be the only practical solution?" Despite the odd phraseology it is clear what Simon meant. When he said "only practical solution" he meant the only solution from the perspective of Israel's government. He did not ask about nor did Schorr offer any practical solutions either from a Palestinian perspective or from the perspective of Israelis who recognize that the only practical solution to the conflict is to end the Israeli occupation and military dictatorship over 3.5 million people.

The words 'practical' and 'realistic' are supposed to sound as if they do not contain ideology, or the political preferences of one side or another. But in our world, only those with power are permitted to define what is 'practical' and what is 'realistic,' and so these words are masks for ideology and power. This is why Israel's fence is termed "practical" and an end to the occupation and siege of millions of people (i.e giving them their basic freedom and human rights) is not even considered. The Berlin wall too was only meant as a 'practical' solution to the problem of East German emigration.

Schorr then observed:

SCHORR: "Ironically the Israeli newspaper Haaretz quotes Yasir Arafat in an interview saying that he is now ready to accept the deal with the 95% of all the territory that President Clinton proposed at Camp David a year and a half ago. So I don't know whether that's something to laugh or cry about."

I certainly don't want Schorr to cry, and perhaps he would not feel the need if he was able to stick to the facts. What Arafat said, according to the Ha'aretz article that Schorr cited is "that he accepts the proposal first made by former U.S. president Bill Clinton as a framework for a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians." ("Arafat to Ha'aretz: I accept Clinton's plan; peace is possible, Haaretz, June 22, 2002)

The article does not mention Camp David or any percentage of territory allegedly offered to the Palestinians. It is now indisputable that the claim that Arafat was offered 95% of anything at Camp David was pure spin, as Ehud Barak has since said and former Clinton official Robert Malley confirmed last summer.

It is clear that Arafat is referring not to Camp David but to the Clinton proposals of December 2000 which he had accepted at the time "as a framework for a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians" and which went beyond the vague proposals which were presented verbally and without maps to Arafat in Camp David.

This framework served as the basis for negotiations in Washington and in Taba, Egypt which continued until late January 2001 until Barak broke them off. These talks were "the most fruitful, constructive, profound negotiations in this phase of the peace process," according to then Israeli foreign minister Shlomo Ben Ami (New York Times, January 28, 2001).

What we were supposed to understand from Schorr's misrepresentation of the Ha'aretz article is that Arafat who allegedly rejected a wonderful offer at Camp David has now realized the error of his ways, and how truly generous and wonderful the Israeli offer was, and now wants to go back and seize it, but due to his own stupidity and violence it may be too late. Is this not what Schorr wanted us to understand? Well, unfortunately for Schorr, there is nothing in the Haaretz article to support it.

On the Bush administration's reported intention to propose some sort of "provisional Palestinian state," Schorr informed us that:

"The interesting thing is when I saw prime minister Sharon here last week, he had not totally ruled out the idea. But then came these latest suicide bombings and then started the reoccupation of the territory and so if you look for ironies, the organizers of the bombings can congratulate them selves on possibly having sabotaged the Bush initiative."

If we unpick Schorr's logic, he is saying that in the absence of the suicide attacks, Sharon's not total rejection of a vague and incoherent plan for a 'provisional' Palestinian state (no one has explained how this is not simply a re-naming of the status quo without actually changing it) would have been enough to move things forward in the absence of any commitment to actually end the Israeli occupation once and for all. He also seems to be suggesting that Israel was not, prior to the two latest suicide bombings, entering Palestinian cities at will. Nowhere in his analysis did Schorr address the fact that the current Israeli government has as its policy to never end the occupation, and that is why it keeps building settlements. In other words, the only obstacle to peace in Schorr's view seems to be Palestinian violence.

And yet, while he blames the organizers of the attacks--perhaps correctly--for torpedoing the Bush initiative, I do not recall him ever blaming Israel for anything, let alone the countless times that Israel has torpedoed US diplomatic missions by carrying out assassinations as it has so many times, just on the eve of a visit by a US envoy.

In their constant references to Israel's "reoccupation" of parts of the West Bank, Schorr and Simon at no point informed the listeners that under the Oslo accords the Palestinian Authority has never controlled more than 17% of the West Bank. In recent months even this "control" has been rendered utterly meaningless by the total free rein the occupation forces have in these areas and the decimation of Palestinian Authority institutions. Clearly, Schorr is one of those who wishes to maintain the fiction that Israel has made significant withdrawals under Oslo and these are now being reversed. For Palestinians, of course, the occupation and all its apparatus of colonization never left and in fact only got more oppressive as the settlements continued to spread on their land.

For Schorr, posing as "news analysts," the game is simple: when it comes to Israel you "analyze" its options with circumspection, never appearing to make a judgment about Israeli behaviour or saying what Israel should do. When it comes to the Palestinians however, Schorr is never shy to issue summary judgments about Arafat or any other Palestinian, and to make lists of what Palestinians ought and ought not to do. This is the Dennis Ross/Washington Institute for Near East Policy school of 'analysis.'

Schorr whose commentaries make plain that he is no impartial observer should not be given a regular platform from which to prosletyze for Israel without a regular commentator from the Palestinian side to counterbalance his naked partisanship.

Ali Abunimah
http://www.abunimah.org