Most media still presents events in the context of an ongoing, struggling, or dead "peace process" while avoiding reference to the Israeli military occupation of the West Bank. The reality of the "peace process" has been that human rights indicators on the ground demonstrate an unbroken continuation of the military occupation in the seven years since Oslo was first signed in September 1993. The use of the phrase "peace process" in light of this continuination -- or as in many spheres, such as freedom of movement, the increase -- of human rights violations against the Palestinian population, fails to present an accurate image of the pressures of the last seven years on Palestinians. Media organisations rarely term Israeli troops as occupiers, Occupied Jerusalem is usually described as "Jerusalem", and no in-depth investigative reports have been seen that explore and question the use of live ammunition at the levels we have seen them used against Palestinian civilians during clashes. Images of Palestinian civil life are all but absent from the overwhelming majority of reports, the media preferring to cover contextless violence, rather than trying exploring the roots of why they are happening. [Added 19 October 2000]
Defence for Children International/Palestine Section noted on 27 October 2000 that current attempts to blame Palestinian adults for the deaths of Palestinian children skew the reality of the present conflict and divert attention away from the roots of the problem, which is the ongoing and systematic abuses of Palestinian human rights resulting from the 33 year long Israeli military occupation of Palestinian territory:
DCI/PS has documented the deaths of 43 Palestinian children, with an additional 3 who have been declared clinically dead, and the injury of over 1,000 children. The circumstances surrounding the deaths of these children range from children who participated in protests against the Israeli occupation, children who were hit with live ammunition while playing in their backyard or walking to school, and children who were denied prompt access to medical care.
The notion that Palestinian parents send their children to die is yet the latest reincarnation of a well-known scapegoating strategy known as 'blaming the victim.' In a clear attempt to avoid Israeli culpability for the deaths of Palestinian children, animosity or suspicion is directed towards the victim, thereby justifying or excusing the original violation the victim suffered. Similar to the battered wife who "drove" her spouse to physical abuse, Palestinian adults are blamed for the death and injury of their children by Israeli military forces. No less, Palestinian parents are accused of placing their children in dangerous situations, the implication being that Palestinian parents do not love their children in the same way that other parents do. No mention is made that contact with Israeli military forces is often unavoidable as Israeli soldiers are posted near schools, homes, and community centers throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
In addition to the attempt to de-humanize the Palestinian people, such an approach allows for the oversight of how it is that these children are actually being killed and wounded. When attention is focused on the parents of Palestinian children, the Israeli soldier who points his weapon and fires at the child, along with the Israeli government that sanctions these actions, escapes all accountability. Moreover, attention is diverted away from the countless other Israeli violations of Palestinian children's rights, including the closure of over 30 schools and confining thousands of Palestinian children to their homes for days on end as a result of the curfew imposed on the Old City in Hebron. The end result is that Palestinians are blamed for their own victimization. Of particular concern to DCI/PS is the article "Child Sacrifice is Palestinian paganism," published in the 27 October 2000 edition of "The Jerusalem Post." In addition to asserting that Palestinian adults use children as human shields during confrontations, the article's author states that DCI/PS launches "propaganda attacks against Israel, while ignoring the abuses of children by the Palestinian leadership."
As a child-rights organization advocating, in particular, for the implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), we work to ensure that all parties to the present conflict act in the best interests of the child and according to the rule of law. With reference to Israel, we advocate that Israel upholds its obligations under international law, both those it has willingly assumed and those to which it is bound through customary international law. To date, and in addition to numerous other violations, Israel has failed to implement the CRC in the Occupied Territories, despite its 2 November 1991 entry into force in Israel, or to submit the required country report to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child.
As a child-rights organization, DCI/PS mourns the death of each of these children. DCI/PS regrets that any child is forced to live in violent circumstances, but the Israeli military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip has made that an inevitable fact of life for approximately 1.5 million Palestinian children. These conditions will only improve upon the complete Israeli withdrawal from the Palestinian territories. [Added: 29 October 2000]
Israel has long been trying to get journalists to normalise their annexation of East Jerusalem and occupation of Palestinian land with language. There was an outbreak of media reporting on 23 October which described Gilo, an illegal Jewish settlement in the Palestinian West Bank, as a "community" in Jerusalem:
"Spokesmen from both sides have been reacting to Sunday's violence, when Israeli helicopter gunships and tanks fired on Palestinians in the Beit Jala suburb of Jerusalem, after what the Israelis said was Palestinian gunfire against a Jewish community in Gilo." -- from "Opinions remain poles apart," BBC News Online, Monday, 23 October, 2000. 12:28 GMT 13:28 UK
"The Israeli Army said the attacks followed Palestinian gunfire against a Jewish community in Gilo, south Jerusalem" -- BBC News Online, 23 October 2000. This page has since been removed. Subsequent stories on the BBC website currently refer to Gilo as a settlement, cf. "US concern over new Palestinian 'alliance'," from Thursday, 26 October, 2000, 05:30 GMT 06:30 UK.
AP and Reuters photo captions have also described Gilo settlement as a "neighbourhood", or "suburb":
Last week's firefights between Gilo, an Israeli suburb of Jerusalem, and Beit Jalla, a suburb of the Palestinian town of Bethlehem, introduced a wrinkle to the struggle here that neither side ever anticipated. It turned middle-class bedroom communities into battlegrounds.
--"Across a valley, suburban streets become a battleground", October 28, 2000, AP.
Additionally unreported, Gilo settlement is built on land confiscated from Palestinian residents of Beit Jala, the nearby West Bank town from which instances of Palestinian gunfire have been reported. [Added 26 October 2000, updated 29 October]
As the events entered their thirteenth day, on 10 October 2000, media organisations are currently focused on Barak's 'generous' extension of the deadline for the Palestinians to "cease their violence', on the three Israeli soldiers taken hostage by Hezballah in Lebanon, and on the Kofi Annan visit.
For two-and-a-half days, since it began on Saturday night, large groups of settlers have been rampaging through Palestinian villages and towns in the West Bank and 1948 areas/inside the Green Line, burning down Palestinian homes, vandalising parked Palestinian cars and throwing stones and shooting at Palestinian drivers, and attacking Palestinians.
This widespread outbreak of Israeli violence -- ironically during a time where the phrase "Palestinian violence" has been a media mantra -- has been all but completely ignored by the media. One journalist in the country suggested that this is because no footage exists of the Israeli violence. Where a few media reports have touched on these events, they have been characterised as "fighting" between Palestinians and Israelis.
The first article noted by Addameer (i.e. not necessarily the first article) to report on the settler violence came two days after it began, on Tuesday 10 October 2000. This was CNN's Diplomacy starts anew in bid to ease Middle East crisis, Web posted at: 7:24 a.m. EDT (1124 GMT).
This report largely inaccurately presents the events with a proportional level of violence from both sides, and while it would certainly be true to say that Palestinians in some areas have thrown stones and there have been isolated reports of gunfire at Jewish settlements, the reality of the situation is that Israeli settlers have been both assisted or allowed free rein by the Israeli military. In the latter case, the Israeli military have only stepped in, when there has been Palestinian retaliation to join in the attack on them.
"Latest developments" reports by Addameer that pertain to these events:
- No. 23 - Tuesday 10 October 2000,Web posted 3:00am (GMT+2)
- No. 22 - Tuesday 10 October 2000,Web posted 1:00am (GMT+2)
- No. 21 - Monday 9 October 2000,Web posted 5:00pm (GMT+2)
- No. 20 - Monday 9 October 2000,Web posted 3:00am (GMT+2)
- No. 19 - Sunday 8 October 2000,Web posted 10:30pm (GMT+2)
- No. 18 - Sunday 8 October 2000,Web posted 3:30am (GMT+2)
On the night of Saturday, 7 October, tanks, heavy artillery, and helicopters were deployed around all Palestinian cities in Gaza, and tanks were deployed around Gilo settlement near Bethlehem, and the Pisgot settlement on Jebal Al-Tawwl in Ramallah. The Israeli Military Commander for the Ramallah area was quoted on Israeli news that all Palestinians in the area of the Pisgot settlement should evacuate their homes.
During the night, thousands of Israeli settlers (in many cases together with Israeli soldiers) attacked Palestinian villages and towns in the West Bank and 1948 areas (Nazereth, Bidya, Sourif, Salfit area) and East Jerusalem neighborhoods (Shufat, Al Azeriyeh, Anata, and Sheik Jarrah). Attacks included the use of live ammunition and beatings, and acts of serious vandalism included the burning of shops, cars, and olive groves.
On Friday 6 October, many wire service and news organisations reported that Israel had "sealed" or "closed" the occupied territories. In fact, the city of Jerusalem and Israel itself have been closed to 99 percent of the 3 million Palestinians since March 1993. The closure reported actually refers to the withdrawl of permits from the few thousand Palestinians (the 1 percent) that had passed Israel's inscrutable and excluding application process and "security" checks and were current permit holders.
Journalist Robert Fisk, writing in the Independent newspaper on 6 October, commented:
Meanwhile our impartial media continues to suggest that there's nothing very odd about using tanks and missiles against rioters and gunmen. The Los Angeles Times is now talking of the Israeli tactics as "heavy handed" --like a schoolmaster who prefers six of the best to three of the best -- while BBC Television news told us when the first helicopter fired a missile into a Palestinian apartment block that the Israelis were "resorting to extreme measures".
On Friday 6 October, many radio/TV reports from the first two-thirds of the day suggested that the clashes were winding down when the reality was that, by the end of Friday, 11 more Palestinians were killed (5 WB, 6 Gaza) and Addameer recorded 177 injuries in the West Bank and 132 in Gaza. On Saturday 7 October, Reuters and CNN were still reporting 8 killed, the BBC "at least eight", while the funerals for 10 of the 11 were taking place. This has been standard for the duration of the clashes.
On Saturday 7 October, Reuters claimed:
"The casualties brought the total death toll in nine days of violence to 77, the highest number of dead since 60 Arabs and 15 Israelis were killed in 1996 when Israel opened an entrance to a tourist tunnel in Arab East Jerusalem."In fact the number was 88 Palestinians and 16 Israelis, a figure investigated by Birzeit University's Web Project in 1997 during the making of the September 1996 Memorial website. A team of students, staff, and others took both the official (and slightly differing) Palestinian Authority lists and went to interview families and friends of all those killed.
Several wire service and other reports from the first few days of the clashes used innaccurate terminology.
The phrase "rubber bullets" was used to describe rubber-coated metal bullets, heavy steel projectiles with a thin coating of rubber, that are regularly used alongside live ammunition to lethal effect. Rubber-coated metal bullets are fired from metal tubes placed on the end of high-velocity rifles, powered by blank rounds. Tubes contain around 8 rubber-coated steel projectiles. Plastic-coated metal bullets (circular, with a hard plastic coating) are fired in the same way, from cannisters with a wider diameter, holding around 15. Range and velocity of both types are unknown. Both are capable of entering the skull cavity and also breaking bones. Photos of a single rubber bullet are available below.
