BIRZEIT UNIVERSITY unveiled its new homepage on the World Wide Web (WWW), June 6. The first visitor (known as a 'hit' in the jargon) was registered a few hours after the launch from the University of Missouri in the US. It is now one of the very few web sites to be found in Palestine and the organizers hope it will spur many more NG0s, companies, institutions and individuals to do the same.
In most countries this would not qualify as news, but because of the lack of communications infrastructure in the Palestinian territories and the denial of access to the Israeli one, Palestinians have been all but cut off from outside contact. The best example of this is that for 23 years after the Israelis occupied the West Bank and Gaza, Palestinians were denied telephone lines to the rest of the Arab world. With the world currently undergoing a communications revolution - and the developing world is very much a part of this process - countries ignore developments such as the Internet at their peril.
The Internet can be accessed by anyone who has a computer, modern, the right software and a connection to a service provider. Then one can begin to ‘surf’, travelling across the ether from one side of the world to another, all in a matter of seconds. This may not seem like the most fascinating idea to some, but put yourself in the shoes of a school pupil from one of the West Bank's many villages who has probably never even visited a town like Ramallah, never mind Jerusalem or Tel Aviv. Put him in front of a computer and tell him he can communicate with someone ten thousand miles away and the experience can do nothing less than explode his present horizons.
So for those not in the know, a homepage is something akin to a newsletter providing information on a particular company or institution. Similarly, a homepage can be created by anyone with the above equipment and a basic knowledge of the relatively simple programming language used for the Internet: HTML or Hyper Text Mark-up Language. As the name suggests, the World Wide Web is a network of computers, and once a homepage in one country has been set up then anyone with the right equipment from anywhere in the planet can access it.
Recent estimates of Internet users worldwide stand at about 70 million, and the number is growing every day at a phenomenal rate. To users, the Internet is an incredibly democratic institution, with no one information supplier able to dominate or shout louder than any other. Moreover, the inability of governments to control the information put out on the ‘Net' means there is a flow of uncensored material which in turn means the system is a very powerful tool indeed.
It is this concept that Palestinians have yet to comprehend and act on fully. Israelis realized this years ago and now they are the second biggest users - as a country - after the US. This means that Internet users are far more aware of the Israeli presence, and thereby Israeli propaganda, than that of the Palestinians. Thus the potential of the net to redress the balance in terms of news coverage is tremendous and, as yet, untapped.
According to Nigel Parry, the man responsible for setting up the Birzeit site, one of the problems Palestinians face in regard to getting on-line is direct Israeli interference. "In June 1989, Israel issued a military order making it an offense for Palestinians to use faxes, electronic lines and telephones for the web," says Parry. "So for years Israelis have refused, and continue to refuse, to give lease lines to Palestinian institutions. Now they say it is subject to negotiation." Parry also points out the fact that most of the information flows from the developed to the developing world. This means that the majority of information about the developing world is written by the North, while the voice of people living in the poorer nations is either non-existent or drowned out by all the noise. This situation must change.
The idea of starting a homepage for Birzeit came from Marwan Tarazi, director of the university's computer center, in early 1995. After several experiments with prototype homepages and a number of inter-departmental training courses in the Internet, and the HTML language, work began I in earnest six months a-o as a joint project between the computer center and the public relations department. Parry was determined that the Birzeit site would be a polished, professional set up, which visitors to the homepage could actually read (or 'browse', as the terminology goes). "Too many sites," he says, "are far from completed when they are launched and so there is little or nothing for the user to see or read. We tried to avoid this completely."
Parry reiterated Edward Said's comments about giving the Palestinians permission to narrate - few people allow them this opportunity, so, for the reasons mentioned above, the Internet gives them the chance to do this. "It is useful that the US is the biggest user of the Internet as they are the people who are perpetuating the conflict," Parry points out. "So it becomes useful in changing perceptions. When Israel deported 400 Hamas activists to Lebanon, the activists set up a university to continue the education of the 66 students among them, and to send a message to the world and to Rabin [the then Israeli prime minister] that the Palestinians are an educated people and to get out of the realms of the cliché of Palestinians being only terrorists."
It is obvious to Parry that the Israelis are not happy about the university setting up the web site. But with the UNDP acting as the server, it seems there is little the Israeli authorities can do about it. Parry points out that telephone lines in Palestine can take digital communications and that they are not being used to their full capacity, but there is another problem. "There are three main telephone exchanges for the West bank and Gaza Strip. Thus anyone who calls Rafah from Khan Younis, say, is connected via Asqalan. This has big security implications." Until the advent of an independent telecommunications infrastructure in Palestine, which will be several years from now, the Israeli network will have to be relied on.
The Birzeit University team is now passing on to other institutions the knowledge and experience it gained in setting up the site. "The bottom line," insists Parry, "is that if you type in 'Israel' [on the web] you get thousands of sites, but Palestine has almost nothing
This latest development at the foremost Palestinian university will prove to be a lead, encouraging many other Palestinian organizations to take up the idea. It may even extend its influence to the Arab world.
Birzeit University’s homepage can be found at: http://www.birzeit.edu
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