The Palestinian News Game

What he did "wasn't a crime," says Maher Al-Alami, managing editor of the largest Palestinian newspaper, the East Jerusalem Al-Quds. "Editors have the right to evaluate the importance of the story or news."

He was talking about his decision in December on how to play a story comparing Yasser Arafat to the seventh-century conqueror of Jerusalem, Caliph Omar: on an inside page instead of page one, in defiance of the layout instructions dictated over the phone by one of Arafat's assistants. Al-Alami was detained by Palestinian security officials for five days, and was ultimately brought before the PLO chairman himself. The editor says Arafat listened to his reasons for playing the story inside: the front page was almost entirely taken up by candidates' election ads -- it was the month before Arafat's formal election as president of the Palestinian Authority -- and the lead news element was Arafat's visit to Bethlehem with an accompanying color photo. After hearing the explanation, the chairman kissed him three times on the head, Al-Alami recalls, and said, "I'm sorry. I don't like to arrest my brothers."

Perhaps. But since Arafat assumed power as head of the Palestinian Authority in May 1994, the security forces have made more than thirty arrests of journalists and editors of all political leanings. Detentions have lasted from several hours to a few weeks.

 Although they have been almost completely freed from the Israeli yoke of military censorship, Palestinian journalists are being fettered in new ways. Reporters Sans Frontiers, a watchdog group based in Paris, released a report at the end of 1995 deploring the Palestinian Authority's policy of suspending newspapers and employing threats and violence against journalists. It also criticized the press law issued last year, which prohibits publication of everything from security secrets to immoral or blasphemous material.

Bassam Eid, a Palestinian investigator for the highly regarded Israeli human rights organization B'tselem and a representative of Reporters Sans Frontiers in Jerusalem, finds editors from the Palestinian newspapers despondent and fearful. "I criticize Palestinian journalists -- Why don't you stand up and defend your rights?" he says. "But Palestinian journalists say they don't want to be arrested and what you're calling for is to throw ourselves into the fire."

 The result is a tame, compliant press that relies on WAFA, the official Palestinian news agency, for reports on Arafat and the Palestinian Authority's policy, rarely engages in investigative journalism, and publishes only what Eid calls "vegetarian" criticism of the regime.

As Al-Alami of Al-Quds acknowledges, "We aren't sending material to the Palestinian censorship because we haven't such a thing. But on the other hand, we have self-censorship."

As of March, amid the tumult surrounding the suicide bombings in Israel, two opposition weeklies, affiliated with the Hamas and Islamic Jihad, had closed, leaving only the mainstream Palestinian media to cover the terror's aftermath. They stood united behind Arafat both in condemning the killing of civilians and in lambasting Israel for its crackdowns in Palestinian areas.

"During a sensitive period like this, we know there are human rights violations right and left by Israel and the Palestinian Authority -- but can we really be outspoken in our criticism?" asks Hanna Siniora, publisher of the English-language weekly The Jerusalem Times, which in the past accused the Palestinian Authority of human-rights abuses. "In principle we have to, but we feel that keeping law and order is also important."

The Jerusalem Times does not receive funding from the Palestinian Authority, but many other dailies do. Pinhas Inbari, a senior investigator for Peace Watch, an Israeli organization that monitors adherence to the Oslo accords, says Arafat and his circle manipulate publishers through financial dependency, routinely interfering with editorial policy.

 Still, not everyone sees a totally grim picture.

"I think the Palestinian Authority has been schizophrenic regarding freedom of expression," says Daoud Kuttab, who was fired from Al-Quds in 1994 after signing a petition against a ban on the rival An-Nahar. "It's a fact that they've allowed new papers to open. It's a fact that there's no censorship. Unfortunately, it's also a fact that some papers have been closed and some journalists arrested."

The Voice of Palestine radio station is often praised for its interviews with opposition figures and its call-in talk shows, which provide diverse opinions. But public TV is widely ridiculed for its excessive coverage of Arafat's activities. Radwan Abu Ayyash, Chairman of the Palestinian Broadcasting Corporation (PBC), which runs both TV and radio, says it is too early to write off the TV channel.

"This is the beginning," he says, "My ambition is to reach civilized, accurate programming. This needs some time and nobody's giving us time."

In February, the Palestinian Authority restored PBC's monopoly, shutting down more than a dozen low-powered TV stations in the West Bank. Arabic-language Israeli broadcasts and others from abroad provide some alternative to the PBC, but the situation leaves many Palestinians dissatisfied. Hopeful that the new legislative council will pass a law authorizing private TV stations and in general protect journalists, Kuttab says, "We have a freer press than most Arab countries, but we're not anywhere close to the U.S. or Israel."

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