Posted on 03/01/2004 10:40:26 AM PST by knighthawk
JERUSALEM -- The Palestinian Authority, which President Bush, among others in this country and abroad, hopes will grow into an independent, peace-loving state adjacent to Israel, pays off its Arabic mass media to toe its political line.
And if West Bank or Gaza Strip editors or reporters defy its dictates, they risk jail terms without prior access to courts of justice or physical assaults and destruction of their professional equipment.
''All of our newspapers receive money from Chairman Yasser Arafat -- some more and some less,'' a veteran Palestinian colleague said in a moment of candor.
His adherence to journalistic principles that are taken for granted in the free world cost him two stints behind bars -- the last one in the lockup Arafat operated within his ''Muqataa'' compound in Ramallah until it was demolished by Israeli forces.
''When my wife came to visit me behind bars and saw the conditions there, she prayed for its destruction,'' he went on. He recalled her joy at seeing it in ruins and saying, ''Allah has answered my prayer!''
The PA's first decade of existence has been a nightmare for Palestinian journalists, especially the independent thinkers and analysts among them.
Writing in the Palestine Report, a weekly publication based in Jerusalem's former Jordanian sector, Ahmad Sub Laban tells of several shocking incidents that show the extent to which his colleagues are subjected to hoodlums who are allowed to run amok by the impotent or indifferent PA. He told of an incident that occurred Feb. 2:
''Three armed and masked men broke into Al Quds Educational TV offices in Ramallah late last night. The two night editors, Haron Abu Arra and Aboud Bilbaisi, were beaten and held at gunpoint before the assailants turned their attention to the equipment. By the time Arra and Bilbaisi had managed to flee and call for help, most of the station's equipment had been destroyed and the assailants were long gone.''
No reason was given for the attack -- not in writing or out loud.
The article mentions other recent acts of violence:
''On Jan. 8, the Dubai-based satellite station Al Arabiya's Gaza correspondent, Seifeddin Shahin, was beaten at gunpoint by five assailants.
"On Feb. 3, staff at the Gaza weekly newspaper, Al Dar, returned after the Eid Al Adha holiday to find that their offices had been broken into and the equipment inside destroyed.''
Another Palestinian informant disclosed that local vigilantes converged on the Turkish News Agency's Gaza bureau Feb. 21, ransacked it and beat up its correspondent.
A sit-in staged by 200 Palestinian journalists to protest this kind of totalitarian behavior was held at the Palestinian Legislative Council in Ramallah, but to no avail.
Considering the rampant corruption that exists in the PA, all the way to the top -- Arafat's wife Suha, who is domiciled in Paris, reportedly stashed away $11 million transferred to her by her husband -- and the extent to which public funds, including donations from the international community, are swelling the pockets of the chairman's cohorts, it is not surprising that independent, investigative journalism is not wanted and that its practitioners are the targets of mailed fists.
Face it: This is the regime invited by the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's government to administer the West Bank and Gaza Strip under the terms of the Oslo Accords of 1993. Its projected evolution into a sovereign state is likely to cow the Palestinian news media into total submission to its tradition of one-man rule -- i.e., dictatorship.
Surely, that cannot be the kind of neighbor Israel will enjoy having next door, nor can it be the Palestinian political creature of President Bush's Middle Eastern dream.
What? A sit-in with 200 Palistinians didn't work???? Did they have candles and chant? Did they have ribbons and lots of symbolism??? Say it isn't so!! < /sarcasm>
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