Media ‘letting down Palestinians’
By Alex Stevenson
Western media coverage of the ongoing crisis in the Gaza Strip is unfairly skewed, a Palestinian MP visiting Britain has claimed.
Jamal Naji El-Khoudary, one of four independent MPs within the 132-member Palestinian parliament, claimed the western media “did not reveal the whole story” of recent military action by Israel against Gaza.
He was attending an emergency lobby of parliament by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, organised in response to recent developments in the territory.
“The western media don’t concentrate much on the suffering of the [Palestinian] people,” he told politics.co.uk.
“We’ve realised this because of the absence of coverage for the war on Gaza. Generally the Palestinian issue has been shown in the opposite way, as if Palestinians and Gazans were the occupiers. In fact that is the opposite. We have been occupied by the Israelis.”
Mr El-Khoudary said the public in Britain were “realising more” and applauded British MPs for their support, calling on parliaments in Europe to “do their duty and put pressure on their governments”.
But he reiterated his accusations of bias against reporting in the west, insisting: “Our message to the western media in particular is we want them to deal with our issue in a fair way.”
Movement towards a two-state solution seems as unlikely as ever after the polarising of opinion resulting from Israel’s military incursions in Gaza, which left over 1,300 Palestinians dead.
Mr El-Khoudary attacked the international community over its refusal to accept the result of the January 2006 Palestinian elections, won by Hamas.
“[The international community] spent a lot of efforts to let Hamas participate in elections. The west accepted that. The EU has paid for the election costs. They came to monitor the election. All of them agreed it was a fair election. America actually wooed Palestinian democracy. We’ve been surprised.”
He contrasted this response with the reaction to Israel’s new right-wing prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, despite his refusal to allow basic Palestinian demands.
“Despite all that, we respect democracy and respect the results,” Mr El-Khoudary added.
The “fraught” situation in the Gaza Strip remains unstable and Mr El-Khoudary made clear it was vital that Israel ends its “siege” of Gaza immediately.
He was reluctant to give any cast-iron predictions about how the situation will develop in the next six months, however.
“It is very difficult to predict in the region what is going to happen. Everything is possible to happen in a second,” he said.
“If the truce takes place and they manage to reach agreement between Palestinian factions and open the gates to complete the siege. this will be a good opportunity for Palestinians to make contact with outside world. and establish a Palestinian state.”
