The media gangs up on Hamas
Tim Llewellyn gave a talk to MWAW on July 26 on “Hamas vs Fatah: explaining the conflict”. These are notes from the talk and the ensuing discussion. Tim is a former BBC Middle East correspondent, based in Beirut from 1976-1980 and in Cyprus from 1987-1992. He is now a freelance writer and broadcaster on Middle East affairs, living in London. He has just returned from a trip to Beirut and is writing a book on the Middle East.
Let’s look back at some recent history. In 1988 the leader of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, Yasser Arafat, decided to recognise the state of Israel, in other words, he decided to choose the “two state solution”. The Americans accepted this idea, the ambassador in Tunis opened talks and met Arafat. There were still, of course, lots of arguments among the Palestinians.
Arafat made a big error by appearing to support Saddam Hussein in 1990-1991. But as a politician he knew that his constituency was in favour of Saddam.
In September 1993 Yasser Arafat and Yitzak Rabin met with Clinton on the White House lawn, shook hands and signed up to a system, the “Oslo accords”. On paper it looked quite good, and many Palestinians hoped it would offer a way out. But two basic things were wrong with this.
Firstly, the Israelis kept on building settlements on the occupied territories. 1993 passed, then 94, 95, 96 and still they kept building in a way that divided up the remaining territory, it changed the entire geography and was very intrusive.
Secondly, Arafat realised that he had forgotten about the other Palestinians, those living outside the borders of Israel: some 400,000 in Lebanon, 1 million in Jordan, 300,000 in Syria. These were people who had lost their lands inside pre-1967 Israel. At the Camp David summit in 2000, Clinton and Ehud Barack tried to humble Arafat into making a “final status” agreement, but Arafat decided that even if he signed it would be rejected by his constituency.
The talks broke down. The result was another Palestinian uprising, or the “Al-Aqsa” Intifada.
The West tried to institute elections in the occupied territories. But the “wrong” people got elected - the Palestinians were fed up with Fatah (Yasser Arafat’s political party, the dominant organisation in the PLO). In that part of the world you vote for whoever is going to defend you, and Hamas – like Hezbollah in Lebanon – were doing just that. Since Arafat’s death in 2004, Fatah has been led by Mahmoud Abbas, whom I describe as a Petainist figure, like Marshall Petain (whom the Germans allowed to rule an authoritarian regime in the Vichy region of France during World War II).
I was in Beirut recently. I couldn’t understand why the BBC kept going on about “factional fighting”. Any decent reporter or sub knows that the US has been sending finance and arms to Fata for the past year – you can read all about it in Ha’aretz. But this fact was never part of the mainstream reporting. Yet this was why the fighting was taking place – to get rid of Hamas. [For example, see here, here and here]
None of this was reported properly. One or two BBC reporters try their best, such as Jeremy Bowen [and Alan Johnston?]. But we’re getting the wrong information. The Israeli/western case is being put, but not the Palestinian case.
Q. Are Fatah really corrupt? They are constantly accused of it, but is it true?
A. I don’t think that’s the main reason people voted for Hamas, though that was an element of it. Arafat was an ageing leader of a liberation organisation, he was never in charge of a state. So he had debts to repay, emotionally and politically.
The main reason people voted for Hamas was that they were fed up with the system. Fatah was playing games with the Israelis, arresting people and so on. It’s like Hezbollah – a well-run, efficient set-up, none of the thuggery you might expect in the circumstances. The people on the ground adore it because it is looking after them.
Q. Did you yourself ever experience censorship?
A. Just once. An editor called me up and said would I alter a report I had made to include an Israeli denial of an attack on Palestinians. I refused – the Israelis had been firing into a mosque. I said if they want to deny it they can do it in a separate part of the bulletin. And that is what eventually happened: the Israeli denial ran separately from my report, not inside it, as my line-editor had requested. By the way, he told me he was getting a lot of pressure from the Israelis in London.
Things have changed a lot. The Israelis got a shock in 1982 – they got a very bad press when they invaded Lebanon, they realised that their PR was awful. So during the al-Aqsa Intifada they changed their approach, they put a lot more money and organisation into ringing up editors, reporters and so on.
Moreover, I think the BBC has lost its nerve in recent years, it’s afraid. The government funds the BBC, and of course the government is very close to the Americans and the Israelis.
Q. Why did the Palestinians support Saddam in 1990?
A. That’s a very good question. It was a difficult moment. Many Palestinians had family members working in Kuwait, where they were treated like dirt. Saddam was also seen to be standing up to the west. By the way, if you tried to get that across on the BBC it was very difficult. I was in Baghdad then; the Arab governments were backing the coalition against Saddam, but the people didn’t like it.
Q. Who is pulling Fatah’s strings?
A. There are many Fatahs. Their only respected leader, Marwan Barghouti, is in an Israeli jail. There is a long history of Israelis taking out the leaders, for example the time they blew Hamas leader Sheikh Yassin out of his wheelchair.
Q. Wasn’t Hamas at one point funded by the Israelis?
A. In the early 1980s the Israelis built up Hamas. They saw the PLO and Fatah as the main threat, and so they built up alternative leaderships such as the venal “Village Leagues”. But that all blew up with the Intifada. That’s why Hamas became an independent force.
Q. Is it right for the media to use terms such as “the Gaza takeover” by Hamas?
A. This is one of the things that really outrages me. I was sitting in Beirut listening to the BBC, and they kept saying that Hamas had taken over. But it was the other people who were trying to take over, and they got clobbered.
A lot of this was drowned out by the kidnapping of Alan Johnston. Ordinary Palestinian journalists showed the way in terms of campaigning for his release. But the BBC tried to turn him into a kind of Mother Theresa! He’s very embarrassed by it now.
And it was Hamas who freed him. It’s typical of the arrogance of the west that they won’t allow Hamas any credit.
Q. Why are the media so supine?
There’s an acceptance in the British media that our involvement in the Middle East is “helping people to behave better”. But we are not – we are supporting a country that is behaving like a gangster state. It’s not doing us any good.
I’d like to refer you to an excellent article in the New York Review of Books, entitled “Goodbye to newspapers?”
