For more information about the "Personal Diaries of the
Israeli-Palestinian Conflict" project, please contact:
Address: Nigel Parry, 1919 S. 7th St., Minneapolis, MN 55454, USA.
Tel: (612) 871-4231 or (612) 375-1708.
E-mail: diary@nigelparry.com
This document, the "Personal Diaries of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict" project proposal, is a request for funds to establish a national alternative news network to cover events in the Palestinian towns and cities of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
The most significant shortcomings in existing media coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are: (i) communication of a sense of the scale of what is happening on the ground in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and (ii) comprehensive coverage of how the conflict impacts the lives of normal Palestinians.
In the status quo media reality, this enduring conflict of the 20th Century has been simplified for an international media audience to just two points of interest - sporadic incidents and outbreaks of violence, and developments at the macropolitical level. This narrow window defines "the Israeli-Palestinian conflict" on television screens around the world. The ongoing and tragic human dimension has been lost along the way.
The Personal Diaries project will offer a unique and powerful window into daily life at ground zero in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The varied print, video, and multimedia output of the project and the participatory reporting style in an ongoing series of personal journals written by both Palestinians and internationals, will form a wide 'net' to 'catch' the potentially large readership of people currently alienated or otherwise distanced from interest in the conflict by existing styles and content of traditional news.
Six writers living in the towns and cities of the West Bank and Gaza Strip will send text, stills, audio and video back to a centralized core group of seven people that includes editors, translators, and multimedia professionals. This core group will publish the material in a weekly 'newspaper' website, a monthly magazine, quarterly CD-ROMs, and an annual video documentary, available in three languages - English, Arabic, and Hebrew.
The project concept, which was developed out of Internet work pioneered at Birzeit University, has already been extensively tested in a single diary model with considerable success giving confidence that the Personal Diaries project outlined in this proposal will be similarly successful, granting people access to information and perspectives not currently available in the media, and also having a positive impact in drawing attention to the role played by the media in conflict situations.
This initial seed proposal outlines the immediate needs at this stage in the project, which are detailed at the end of this document. It is believed that if these immediate needs are met then this important project stands a good chance of raising the needed funds to implement the full "Personal Diaries" project. A partner organisation in the West Bank for this project has not yet been identified.
This proposal is split into the following sections:
1) Abstract
2) Existing media coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
3) Example of a serious flaw in international media coverage
4) The testing ground: Birzeit University and other Palestinian appropriation of the Internet
5) The model: "A Personal Diary of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict"
6) Reviews of "A Personal Diary of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict"
7) Proposed expansion of the project:"Personal Diaries of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict"
8) Immediate project needs and contact information
Palestinian media coverage - The Palestinian news media includes several national newspapers, a state-owned national radio/television network, and several smaller radio and television stations. Programming and reporting is almost exclusively in Arabic, with a small amount of Hebrew and English. Palestinian journalists from either the West Bank and Gaza Strip are not usually granted Israeli press cards, which cuts them off from travel inside Israel and to Jerusalem, and between the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Almost all of the Palestinian news organizations have some level of affiliation with the ruling faction in the Palestinian Authority (PA), and PA censorship and intimidation of journalists and editors is a regular feature of the landscape. Much news falls short of international standards of objectivity and accuracy, with advocacy journalism the norm after years of conflict over national rights.
Israeli media coverage - Most Israeli news reporting is in Hebrew, with some English and Arabic available. The Arutz Sheva ("Channel Seven") settler radio station, the Jerusalem Post and Ha'aretz ("The Land") newspapers, and the government-owned IBA television news all offer English news. The first two in this list offer an extreme right wing Israeli viewpoint, with Ha'aretz offering a more liberal view of events and a number of good investigative pieces.
A very effective press service for foreign journalists is run out of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, distributing all manner of information at wire service speeds by e-mail and fax, including translations from both the Israeli Hebrew and Palestinian Arabic daily press. Most foreign journalists avail themselves of this free service.
Israeli journalists report from a distance on a society Israelis view as threatening, to a primarily Israeli audience which is very sensitive to how the conflict is reported. Israeli media is subject to Israeli government censorship and consequently puts a low priority on investigative reporting into the nature of the continuing military occupation of large parts of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
International media coverage - As the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of the top news stories in the world, most major international networks and newspapers maintain permanent representatives in the country, some preferring to send representatives only at critical periods, totaling some several hundred correspondents at any given time in the country.
The Palestinian-run Jerusalem Media and Communication Center (JMCC) compiles an excellent daily bulletin of translated headlines and highlights of the Arabic press for subscribing foreign journalists working in the country. Foreign journalists do not tend as a result to rely directly on the Arabic media for information.
In common with Israeli journalists, all but a handful of international journalists choose to live in Israeli-controlled parts of the country, where Western-style resources and amenities are plentiful and easily accessible. Located outside Palestinian-controlled and Israeli-occupied parts of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and sometimes only making occasional visits into these areas, to compile their material correspondents rely primarily on information from both the Israeli government and media, after being alerted to breaking news by the reports of Palestinian stringers.
Conclusion - Arabic-language news is undermined by poor standards or journalism and is subject to censorship by the Palestinian Authority and problems resulting from Israeli-imposed travel restrictions. Hebrew-language news is produced almost exclusively by and for Israelis. English-language news, which forms the bulk of reporting from the West Bank and Gaza Strip that is available internationally, is written almost exclusively by either foreign or Israeli journalists who live in Israeli-controlled parts of the country.
CNN has an office based in Israeli-controlled West Jerusalem. Although Palestinians are employed by the agency to work as stringers and translators, editing is controlled by Israeli CNN employees who rely heavily on the Israeli media for guidance. This is very much the norm in international media coverage. The following brief example from a Reuters wire report posted on CNN's website on 28 April 1998 will highlight some examples of how this affects the news:
Israel to ban Palestinians during jubilee break
JERUSALEM, April 27 1998 (Reuters) - Israel is to ban the entry of Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza from Wednesday until Saturday when the Jewish state marks Remembrance Day for its war dead and its 50th anniversary, the army said on Monday. Israeli police said earlier in the week that security forces were on heightened alert for possible attacks by Moslem militants during the long weekend. In a statement, the army said provisions for such a holiday closure were contained in interim peace deals with the Palestinians. During the closure, security forces would allow the entry of Palestinian ambulances in cases of medical emergency and permit diplomats and other foreigners to enter Israel from the West Bank and Gaza, the army said.
On the surface, a fair enough report of a development. What is missing is any mention that there has been a permanent closure of Israel to Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip since March 1993.
Since 1993, only 8,000-35,000 Palestinians who fulfill strict Israeli security requirements (e.g married men over 35) are allowed into Israel to work at any one time, a figure that represents only one percent of the three million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. At times when there are security concerns such as detailed in the above report even this small number have their permits canceled. In other words, 99 percent of Palestinians - almost three million people - have been experiencing an unbroken Israeli closure for six years.
When the one percent of Palestinians is later allowed to return to work inside Israel, international media organizations such as Reuters will similarly report that Israel has "lifted" or "eased" the closure on the territories.
These structural issues in the news gathering process are most clearly reflected by these kinds of omissions. On CNN's website (http://www.cnn.com/) a list of recommended websites in the Middle East has no category for the "West Bank and Gaza Strip" or "Palestinian autonomous areas" and its general category does not include a single Palestinian website.
As to what is included - rather than omitted - in reports, the question of what is considered "news" is best answered by analysis of news content over time.
One media analyst (Abunimah, 1998) found that over two years, up to the end of September 1998, 49 of the US-based National Public Radio (NPR)'s reports on Israel/Palestine focused on "security", 33 referred to "terrorism", 32 to "Hamas", and 36 to "Dennis Ross". By contrast, only six NPR reports referred to "human rights", eight to "closure", three to "torture" and two to "[house] demolition".
Of the 42 NPR reports that referred to "Israeli settlements", Abunimah noted that eighteen contained the word "security" (a common Israeli justification for settlements) while only one contained the word "[land] confiscation".
The term "illegal" never appeared in connection with Israeli settlements despite their illegality almost universally confirmed by international diplomatic and legal bodies such as the United Nations, and state governments, including that of the United States.
The fact is that terrorism, violence, and the statements of Israeli and Palestinian leaders are the news obsessions of media reporting of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, to the exclusion of forces and events that have a far deeper impact on the lives of Palestinians.
There is no substantial Palestinian-controlled English language news. This is both a key point in this project proposal and was a key reason that Birzeit University first launched its English language website, at http://www.birzeit.edu/ in 1996. Many of the concepts of this project were developed out of work with the Internet at Birzeit University. A partner organisation in the West Bank for this project has not yet been identified.
Birzeit is a national Palestinian university, developing from a school established in 1924, and making the transition from college to university in the mid 1970s. Today, it is recognized as offering one of the best internationally-accredited higher education programs in the Middle East, with 4,000 students following undergraduate and graduate courses in arts, business, engineering, and sciences. A series of ten well-established policy research and community-outreach centers that offer environmental and occupational health science consultancy, adult literacy education, media training, legal research, and others, are currently facilitating development of the emerging Palestinian state.
Birzeit University was founded on the principles of academic freedom, tolerance, pluralism, and free speech, and was the launching pad for many internationally-recognized Palestinian leaders including former Palestinian spokesperson and Palestinian minister Hanan Ashrawi. Sixty percent of the Palestinian delegation to the Madrid Peace Talks were Birzeit faculty. The student council elections at Birzeit, long considered a barometer of Palestinian public opinion, are among the most transparent and democratic in the country.
A direct result of this foundation, Birzeit has always been recognized as an independent institution that promotes knowledge and debate, and has resisted interference from governments. In the decade before the Oslo accords were signed in Washington in 1993, Birzeit's campus was punitively closed by direct Israeli military order fifteen times, the last and longest period totaling 51 months. A sophisticated off-campus teaching programme was devised to overcome the huge problems posed by this development. With the coming of the Palestinian Authority, Birzeit has continued to maintain its independence.
Birzeit's enthusiastic appropriation of Internet technologies reflected both its heritage and the wider Palestinian recognition that the Internet is a medium that offers a range of freedoms unavailable elsewhere. To Palestinians, the Internet represents an uncensored window to the rest of the world, a tool to end the international isolation of Palestinians, and a mechanism to build better relations with the scattered Palestinian Diaspora.
When Birzeit University launched its website for general academic news and information in 1996, it additionally offered information and news about the surrounding community, including an extensive travel guide to the nearby Palestinian town of Ramallah, virtually untouched by similar commercial travel publications, and "The Complete Guide to Palestine's Websites", which is unique in that it lists and reviews all locally-produced Palestinian websites, currently numbering 178.
The energy behind the launching and building of Birzeit's website was Nigel Parry, a Scottish photojournalist with a background of human rights campaigning and lobbying and an employee in the university's public relations office since 1994, who remained the webmaster of the university until June 1998.
As the website launch came in the aftermath of the December 1995 Israeli redeployment from Ramallah during which foreign journalists came to the town in hundreds, Parry included a section called "A Personal Diary of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict", which described what it was like to witness the historic events as a resident of the town.
This initial personal experiment in alternative media caught the imagination of others in the university community and began a series of successful ventures into alternative news reporting. This funding proposal, that developed from the Internet experience of Birzeit University, is the result of three years of testing a smaller model in the field and imagining its potential to positively impact media reporting in the region.
"A Personal Diary" initially offered extensive photo-illustrated reports of key events in the Ramallah area, beginning with the 1995 redeployment, and expanding to include key events in other Palestinian towns. Audio and video began to appear regularly as the project evolved.
In September 1996, as clashes swept across the West Bank and Gaza Strip that resulted in the deaths of 88 Palestinians and 14 Israelis, and injury of around 1,200 more Palestinians, Nigel Parry together with a group of Birzeit staff and students gathered to produce the "On the ground in Ramallah: Reports from a town become battlefield" website which detailed the chronological development of the clashes across the country in text and photographs. Just as the Tienniman Square democracy movement in China first used the Internet to e-mail their version of developments around the world, the "On the Ground in Ramallah" website was the first World Wide Web-based news reporting by local residents in media history that was offered during a period of intense conflict.
At times the Israeli-Palestinian conflict intensified, it was noted that the frequency of hits on Palestinian news websites dramatically increased, as the mainly North American and European visitors sought other perspectives than those found in their national media. The "On the ground in Ramallah" website recorded 3,000 visitors in the ten-day period of the September 1996 clashes. "A Personal Diary" logged 7,000 visitors in the month when Abu Ghnaim/Har Homa was featured in the news. The addition of "A Personal Diary" and other news reports on the wider Birzeit website helped raise the visitors to the university website from 1,000 in its first month of launch (June 1996) to over 20,000 a month by early 1998. International recognition of Birzeit's pioneering role in the Palestinian Internet community was acknowledged when in August 1997, Birzeit Webmaster Nigel Parry was invited to a United Nations symposium in Geneva to report on the development of the Palestinian Internet.
A large part of the popularity of "A Personal Diary" results from its uniqueness and perspective. Three years after it was launched and despite the existence of 178 locally-produced Palestinian websites (compared to 30 in 1996), there is still nothing like it. Few of the existing locally-produced Palestinian websites are written from a personal perspective or attempt to emphasize the human factor in the conflict as opposed to "Arafat said-Netanyahu said" developments at the macro-political level, something which makes the message of "A Personal Diary" easy to relate to for a universal audience.
As mentioned above in the discussion about media reportage of the conflict, all but a handful of international journalists reporting on the conflict live outside the West Bank and Gaza Strip. "A Personal Diary" offered something that this distant media was unable to offer - an unfolding account of an individual's three-year experience of living in the center of the conflict zone, and a credible picture of how the normal Palestinians around him experienced the outworking of the peace process.
The experience of closures, the endless and fruitless permit applications, the drama of student elections, the realities of demonstrations, the development of culture and commerce in Palestinian towns after the various redeployments, human rights violations by both Israel and the Palestinian Authority, and many other aspects of the conflict were brought alive by "A Personal Diary".
The difference between a 200 word Reuters wire service news report or 30 seconds of footage on CNN, and the approach of "A Personal Diary" was sometimes the difference between propaganda and reality. Readers were challenged to consider why the many journalists present at clashes regularly fail to report that Palestinian demonstrators shot dead are routinely shot at distances from which it is not possible to hit soldiers with stones. And why these journalists unquestioningly reproduce Israeli army spokespersons' justifications that there was a "life-threatening situation". On some occasions, journalists even made decisions to cover new angles of stories because of entries in the "A Personal Diary".
"A Personal Diary of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict" was an alternative media project that achieved its aim, that of encouraging those dissatisfied with or distrustful of the commercial media to nevertheless find out more about the difficulties experienced by people like themselves in another part of the world, and offering another, important perspective with which to 'decode' or suppliment regular news reports.
"Beyond what governments claim, what leaders promise, what citizens wish-- is reality. The actual day to day life continues in spite of the conflict. What of the people? The students, the religious leaders, the villagers and children? Their experiences are sometimes shaped by events entirely outside their control. Here are some sites which give you a more personal look at events which charge forward, sweeping real people along with them... You absolutely must visit this site. Nigel Parry, a young Scottish journalist lives and works in Ramallah, among Palestinians. He describes life in the occupied territories with wry humor and a sense for what it really means to be a part of a conflict decades old. He treats violence and inhumanity with the same deprecation, whether the Palestinian Authority or the Israeli Defense Force is guilty. His site definitely features the plight of the underdog, the Palestinian in an occupied territory. The photos which accompany his diary bring the conflict to a much more personal level. Look into the faces of those who live with uncertainty."
-- W.W. Norton & Company publisher review of the Diary, one of only two personal resources on the Web recommended to suppliment its textbook on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict --
"A rare opportunity to see the post-Oslo period from a jarringly anti-Israeli perspective, and yet a perspective that is mature, sensitive and stylistically compelling. Watch out, you might become addicted to this site, returning frequently to seek out new diary entries. Peace engenders communication. We like the open tone of critical respect of this site -- reflecting one view -- yet presenting a break with the implacable style of past discourse. Polished and professional."
-- Jewish Communications Network, "Cool 'Jewish' site of the Week" review --
"[The author] draws upon his experiences with the Birzeit University community and, as such, writes from a Palestinian perspective. His collection of thoughts, events, and photos, however, rise above culture to be sensitive meditations on war, human rights, and the conflict in the West Bank."
-- Review syndicated to America On Line, Webcrawler, and Excite --
"[The author] describes the bizarre life of those living there as objectively as possible, a difficult feat considering the daily death and pain.... The conflict is brought from the distance of television to the horrors of reality."
-- Review by Netsurfer Digest --
"This account of post-Oslo-agreement life on the West Bank has been admirably sustained for several years now by the Scottish journalist Nigel Parry, a public relations officer at Bir Zeit University. The sympathies are pro-Palestinian, but as critical of the behavior of the Palestinian Authority as of Israeli settlers, and offering in-depth critiques of various "official versions" of the conflict presented by the regional press. The latest entry, for instance, picks apart the convenient attribution of the recent killing of Hamas member Muhiyideen Al-Shareef to an internal feud within the group. A mix of interesting minutiae - the politics of car license plates - and Parry's on-the-spot, and sometimes risky-sounding, reportage, the overall aim is to counteract the stream of "useless words and information" with some facts, and snapshots, from the ground."
-- Review in the British Independent Newspaper, "Network +" supplement --
"[The] reports are not meant as objective journalism, but provide an honest, on-the-ground look at the occupation, from the point of view of the Palestinians. Highly recommended for understanding why the occupation must end. Now. "
-- Review by Ariga, http://www.ariga.com/, one of the leading Israeli peace-oriented websites.
"A Personal Diary of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict" has already proved to be an effective and popular media with those interested in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Its main limitations were that it only offered the perspective of one individual, reporting from one location, and its output reflected the time-constraints on an individual with a full-time job.
The proposed project, "Personal Diaries of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict", would expand the original idea with a network of eight correspondents: six in the main Palestinian towns of Nablus, Ramallah, Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Hebron, and Gaza, and two correspondents writing from the very different perspective of the Palestinian Diaspora, one in North America, the other in the Arab World, to report on the perceptions of Diaspora communities towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - thus painting a much more complete picture of Palestinian life worldwide. Each correspondent, chosen primarily for their high standard of writing and communication skills, would be equipped and trained with a video camera and computer to collect and regularly send in text, audio, and captured video stills and footage from their area. Each week, this raw material would be edited and published in a multimedia magazine-style website. In times of increased conflict, special reports will be published more frequently. Arabic -language and Hebrew-language versions of the website will also be available.
Once a month, an English-language print magazine would be made from a compilation of the best material. This part of the Diaries project's published output would be aimed primarily at universities around the world. This section of the Diaries project output will not be available in Arabic or Hebrew owing to anticipated problems with censorship. Quarterly, a multimedia CD-ROM would be made from the material already available on the website, with additional and longer video clips. This part of the Diaries project's published output would be aimed primarily at schools and would be available in all three of the projects languages. Annually, video footage would be compiled into video documentaries that show the conflict through the eyes of the correspondents, who will themselves be a mixture of Palestinians and internationals, men and women. These too will be available in all three of the projects languages. This material will have a profound impact on public perception of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The focus on multimedia and design apparent in the staffing and project outline sections of this proposal is intended to bring attention to the project by presenting the material in an attractive, contemporary form, appealing in particular to the younger generations who view art and style as an important component of communication.
All this work will take place in a central office based in the West Bank, staffed by the Project Supervisor and six other staff members. It is intended that the project be fully funded for the first four years, gradually moving to a self-supporting status during this period, reached through a combination of magazine/CD-ROM/video sales, reselling of articles/photographs/video to media organizations, merchandising, advertising, corporate equipment donations, and private financial donations.
Funding sought for the four-year project period is estimated to be in the region of US $2.3 million. Considering the existing reality of vast media inequalities in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the fact that start-up costs for only a city or regional magazine in the United States are estimated to be US$3-5 million and reach the dizzying heights of US$17 million for a national magazine, US$2.3 million seems a reasonable amount relative to the varied multi-media output of the Diaries project and the wide international net of international readers expected. Depending on the success of sales of the various forms of publications, advertising, and other income, the project will be scaled accordingly to reach this self-supporting status by the end of year four.
Tasks will include proposal and letter writing, maintaining a contacts database, visiting funding and other organizations, taking a touring photo exhibition/speaking tour based on the existing diary around the cities of the US in cooperation with Arab American and other organizations, creating a "Personal Diary" extracts magazine to be sent out with funding proposals, networking letters, and distributed during the exhibition/speaking tour.
Equipment needs
Supply needs
Travel needs
Address: 1919 S. 7th St., Minneapolis, MN 55454, USA.
Tel: (612) 871-4231 [until 1 March 1999] or (612) 375-1708
E-mail: diary@nigelparry.com
Existing "Personal Diary" website: http://www.birzeit.edu/diary/ (Birzeit server) or
http://www.nigelparry.com/diary/ (fast U.S. mirror).