It is the eastern gate that consecutive civilizations had stepped in throughout history. Palestine, the heart of ancient world, is located south-west of the Levant between the Mediterranean Sea in the west and the Jordan River in the east. It was first inhabited by Arab Canaanites and afterwards many other nations and states have competed to reign such as Babylonian and Assyrian then Persian and Roman till the Islamic conquests in the 7th century. The last Islamic ruling ended with the Ottoman Empire after its defeat in WWI and the takeover of British troops in 1917.

During this period, the British government facilitated the entry of the Jews to Palestine, who sought to establish a nation-state for the Jews by forced mass displacement of more than 750,000 Palestinians, who were forced out of their homes and lands, in 1948. That year is known now as the year of the Nakba (Catastrophe).

In 1967, the Israeli occupation seized the rest of the Palestinian lands, which is the West Bank and Gaza strip. The harsh situation of the Palestinians under the Israeli Occupation led to the First Intifada in 1987, where the Palestinians confronted Israeli’s cannon with rocks.

In 1993, the Oslo Accord was signed between Palestinian Liberation Organization and the Israeli Occupation. Under this agreement, the PLO recognized the Israeli state and in return it was granted an autonomy in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The Palestinians called it the Palestinian National Authority.

The Oslo accord divided the West Bank and Gaza Strip into three administrative areas: Area A is exclusively administered by the Palestinian Authority; Area B is administered by Palestinian civil administration but under Israeli security control; Area C is administered fully by Israel, which includes 61% of the total area of the West Bank.

The political history of Palestine required a strong media presence that is able to convey its reality, therefore, the Palestinian Media role is considered as one that serves the cause.

In this film, we will look at the reality of the Palestinian Media and the challenges it faces.

Palestine is one of the first Arab counrtries that had printing in 1830, which was the pretext to the emergence of the Press. It was the 5th Arab state which had print media.

The media in Palestine emerged in 1876, when the first newspaper was printed under the Ottoman Empire, and it was called “al-Quds al-Sharif”.

After the Ottoman constitution was announced, in 1908, and till the WWI started, there was thirty-six Palestinian newspapers.

In 1936, the first Palestinian Radio was established and called “Huna al-Quds”. The first TV broadcast started only in 1994 from Gaza.

The Palestinian print media started in early times during the Ottoman rule of Palestine in 1876. This continued until the WWI in 1914. The end of the Ottoman rule altered the political reality in Palestine and resulted in the halt of all newspapers.

In 1919, the papers returned to life with the British Mandate. During the mandate, between 1919 until 1948, different cultural, political and social newspapers were developed and advanced to reach a number of 241 newspapers.

Also, that period witnessed the beginning of the Palestinian radio broadcasting. The British Authorities operated the Near East Broadcasting Station, which was airing from Jaffa (before that it was in Jenin). There was also “Huna al-Quds” from Jerusalem, which was a kind of Arabic chapter of British Radio. It was headed by the prominent Palestinian poet, Ibrahim Toukan, who managed to bring together many artists, intellectuals and politicians and turn this into a national and cultural platform.

The development  of the media in Palestine continued until the establishment of the Israeli state - the “Nakba” in 1948, where all the 241 newspapers ceased to exist and Huna al-Quds Radio Station closed. This was also regarded as a “Nakba” to the Palestinian media.

Due to the new political reality after 1948, a new media model emerged that was driven by political parties to defy the new reality under the Israeli Occupation.  One of the most significant newspapers, which still exist until today, was the communist party’s newspaper, published in the areas of 1948. In West Bank and Gaza, a similar model emerged when political parties and movements started to publish their political stands or to mobilize nationally, either through other newspapers or by establishing their own partisan newspapers after taking the permissions from the ruling authorities in West Bank or Gaza, like al-Quds newspaper, which still exists today.

In 1967, Israeli Authorities occupied the rest of Palestinian land and the media stopped again because of its new political reality with a new ruling authority. However, al-Quds Newspaper relaunched again and other newspapers were publishing during these times but they were predominantly partisan and underground. After 1967, the role of the partisan newspapers has changed significantly in Palestine. They were published underground and played an important role to mobilize the public opinion.

This continued till the Oslo Accord was signed in 1993 and the establishment of the Palestinian Authority. With the establishment of the Palestinian Authority, the media reality in Palestine has fundamentally transformed. New newspapers were founded, including a new official newspaper such as al-Hayat al-Jadida and independent newspapers such as al-Ayyam, considered close to the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). There were other partisan newspapers that belong to Islamic currents. These currents were something new for the political life in Palestine, and they started to emerge at the end of the 1980s. After the establishment of the Palestinian Authority, these currents managed to get licenses to publish newspapers in the nature of Political-Islam.

Private TV broadcast has also emerged. These channels were transmitting on a local frequency around their cities. Almost every Palestinian city in the West Bank had at least one local TV station that covered its local news.

This developed took place until the emergence of the satellite channels. Beside the official Palestinian channel, Palestine TV, there are independent channels such as Maan, and social and entertainment channels such as al-Falstiniah, and specialized channels such as An-Najah of the An-Najah University and al-Quds Education channel. There are also partisan channels such as Palestine Today which belongs to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad Movement, al-Aqsa and al-Quds of Hamas movement, and al-Awda that belongs to Fatah movement.

While the print media, especially the partisan, started to fade, the satellite media started to rise which included partisan, independent, commercial and official.

The Media is naturally influenced by the environment it functions within. The Palestinian Media is unique in that respect as it functions under the Israeli occupation which works to block it from conveying the truth.

The experience in Palestine is very unique, since Palestine was never an independent state, and therefore was denied the opportunity to keep up with other countries and to consolidate its media as a state.

There are many precedents related to the Palestinian media. For example, in 1908, there was a Palestinian newspaper that published a women section, this was unique comparing to the surrounding countries. The lady who used to write this section was Sathej Nassar, and she was the first woman to be jailed by the British Mandate for six months.

Her husband, Badea Nassar, who is also the publisher of the newspaper “al-Carmel” wrote to her: “If history will not remember me for publishing “al-Carmel” magazine, it will remember me for being the husband of the first lady arrested by the British Mandate.”

She was arrested for her journalistic work.

This is one precedent, there are others, for example in the radio sphere, even though Palestine has never been an independent state, the radio station “Huna al-Quds” was the second radio in the Arab World, and in the radio there was a host called Fatimah Albudairi, who was the third female radio presenter in the Arab world.

I think these precedents in the Palestinian media are important, but it was disturbed by the British Mandate, then by the Nakba, and later disturbed too by the Naksah (in 1967). But Palestinians maintained a strong media presence through other Arab radio stations.

On the level of visual arts, there were some minor precedents, such as having the first Arab women as a photographer, her name was “Karimah Abboud”, we can find today some of her art work in Nazareth. There was also “Sulafah Jadallah” who was the first Arab woman who studied film making and the first film director and camera woman who was documenting warfare. She documented the battles of Black September.

Because Palestinians are living under occupation, this issue occupies the majority of the media coverage. That includes Political news, news from the field about the attacks of the occupation on the Palestinian people. This is valid to all types of media, print, audio, visual or electronic.

However, this does not mean that other aspects, such as local news or economy are not covered. “al-Hayat al-Jadida” is distinguished by its investigative reports on economy. Other outlets have other specialized coverage. But the occupation practices, the oppression of the Palestinian people, is dominant in the journalists’ work and the nature of media coverage and message. The journalist is not isolated from the people, he is also targeted. He is present behind the camera but in many cases present also in front of the camera as a victim.

To compare the Palestinian media reality with another media reality, we need to remove “media” and say political reality, social reality, cultural reality. These realities will immediately get to the media, not the media in the traditional concept, but as a parameter for the existential and cultural conditions and the consciousness movement condition.

Eventually the media reproduces the movement of consciousness as a simulated covenant or linguistic covenant, and this movement of the consciousness is not a positive nor negative thing. It is just a concept of how things are formed, how people view themselves politically. You will see for example that in some contexts, the sectarian aspect is strong, because it’s a social aspect. In our context, the political-factional aspect is strongly present, because factions recreated “sects”. In other contexts, their will the conflict between corporations/companies that is present, in a liberal-capitalist nature.

Replacing companies by factions, or sects, asserts that the media works within the same structure. In the corporations’ context for example, you will find the advertisement as dominant, say the paradigm of Pepsi and CocaCola. In the sectarian context, you will identify to which sect the channel belongs as soon as you see its logo. In Palestine, you will identify to which faction the channel belongs as soon as you watch the news or view a slogan.

The crisis of the Arab media lies in the transformation from a historical mission that should have matured, to a service mission. This media transformed the political, the cultural and the consumer affairs into similar concepts.

However, the Palestinian case is distinguished due to the conflict with the occupation. This is the only aspect that differs the Palestinians from the rest of the Arab world.

Unfortunately, if you make a qualitative and quantitative study on the Palestinian media discourse, you will find that more than the half reflects the internal political and social discourse, perhaps more than the conflict with the occupation.

This culminated in the Palestinian internal conflict that developed into division, militarized and violent confrontation. Today, you can notice that in the context of the occupation, the media does not focus on core issue, such as the borders or Jerusalem or refugees. It focuses on the Authority’s priorities, whether in the West Bank or Gaza. The catastrophe here, is that our media is practicing what can be called political money laundry or political reality whitewashing.

With the arrival of the National Authority in 1994, the Palestinian media was energized and diversified between public and private ownership. The authority then rushed with laws to regulate media and give licenses to the media institutions. Today, the Palestinian scene is witnessing an increasing number of media outlets, most notably, al-Hayat al-Jadida established by Nabil Amr in 1994 and currently owned by the Palestinian Investment Fund and considered the official newspaper in Palestine.

Al-Ayyam Newspaper launched in 1995 by Al-Ayyam Publishing House.

Al-Quds is one of the oldest Palestinian newspapers, which still exist to date, it was founded by Mahmoud Abu Zuluf in Jerusalem in 1951. The current editor-in-chief is Walid Abu Zuluf.

On the radio level, there are 68 local radio stations, among them, Ajyal Radio Network owned by Bakri Radio Broadcasting Company that owns three stations with 22 wave frequency, which first founded Ajyal Radio in 1999.

Raya FM launched in 2006 by Raya Advertising and Publishing and it is a private radio.

As for the TV broadcasting, there are 28 local and satellite channels, among these is “Palestine TV” the official channel of the Palestinian Authority, founded in 1994. The channel is part of the Palestinian Broadcasting Corporation.

“Al-Aqsa” satellite channel was founded in 2006 in Gaza.

There are channels that broadcast from outside Palestine such as “al-Quds” satellite channel that was launched in 2008 from Beirut by a group of Palestinians in the diaspora.

“Palestine Today” broadcasts from London and was founded in 2013. The channel is owned by a group of Palestinian and Arab businessmen.

The Palestinian media is potentially free and seeks to be free, however, it is constrained by the Israeli occupation. The Palestinian satellite channels tried to commit to a free media approach, and tried to push through the Palestinian narrative and story by covering different angles of pain, suffering, torture and cruelty including the stories of the arrests, home demolishing, land confiscation, the humiliation on the check-points of the occupation and others.

Until this moment, there is only one law that regulates the development of media in Palestine, which is the law of copyright. We have drafted 4 laws that haven’t been approved yet. These are the Journalists’ Syndicate law, the Visual and Audio Broadcasting law, Media Supreme Council law, and another one. This is an obstacle for the development of the Palestinian media. The Palestinian media needs a legal reference to help its development.

We are facing many problems between the journalists and different institutions regarding libel, slander and defamation cases. These cases are being referred to criminal court, which holdback the evolution of the Palestinian media. We honestly need a new law that deals with these accusations in order to protect the journalism and journalists. Till this moment, we are suffering from absence of a law that prevent journalists from going to prison for publishing a report, as is the case in many other countries. We are working as journalists, academics and union members for that law to be adopted in Palestine. But till now, the Palestinian authority has not adapted, in any law, the protection of journalists from the assault of either the political or financial institutions.

According to a newly published research, internet is considered the most used tool for following the news among Palestinians. Internet penetration have reached 2 million users in Palestine. More than 85% of them rely on Social Media to follow the news and 68% rely on the news websites.

Around 30% of the Palestinian public follow the news on TV. The newspapers and radio are the least favorable by Palestinians, where radio listeners are around 25% and Newspaper readers are around 20%.

Which media tools you use to get the news and information?

• I use is the internet the most because I am mostly on my laptop or computer. I surf the Palestinian, Arabic and international news websites including the Social Media. I do listen to the radio whenever I am driving.

• Internet.

  Why?

  Easy. You do not need to go to the shop to get the newspaper. You can directly visit any website anywhere any time to get the most updated news, unlike the newspapers that publishes news that happened ten hours ago. As for the internet, you get the news of few hours or even minutes ago.

• My time and work is linked to internet, I might spend my whole day on the internet. I could look at news, entertainment, study or work, everything through internet.

• You can say 95% of the time is spent on the computer and 5% on TV. TV became a secondary tool. TV is becoming a tradition just to bring the family together but this even fading because everyone is preferring to be with his computer.

• I do not watch TV that much. Sometime during the holidays, I watch some news of certain events but otherwise I do not use it for news.

• Part of our tradition is when there is a newspaper at home, one could look at it. But no one is committed to go and buy the newspaper for news.

Few years back, we used other mediums to get information, these mediums, such as the newspapers, are dying now. Even flyers, which is used to inform people about certain events, are being replaced by events on Social Media which is more effective. Social Media is also taking a different role, where it is becoming a better tool for documentation and also organizing calendars for events. We also can notice that people are using Social Media for live streaming, people bring a new way to talk about a new story or issue. Now we have different people that talk in different ways about their problems, ambitions, ideas, and the reality they live in.

Although article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights stresses on the right to freedom of opinion and expression, the Israeli occupation does not respect neither a law or constitution.
In 2015, the violations against press freedom by the Israeli Occupation reached to 4007 cases in West Bank and Gaza. Most of these violations are physical attacks and injuring journalists.

So far in the first quarter of 2016, the violations reached to 80 attacks including the closure of two media institutions.

Currently there are 17 Palestinian journalists in the Israeli occupation’s prisons. Since 1972, 81 journalists were killed by the Israeli occupation.

It is difficult to compare the Palestinian Media to any other media in the world. Why? Because we are under a daily Israeli occupation. The Palestinian media undergoes Israeli pressure, there was a tight Israeli military censorship on Palestinian newspapers. The Israeli occupation authority is trying to subdue the Palestinian Media narratives and exercises great pressure to limit the press freedom, for example, preventing them from accessing to information and even news production.

Therefore, the Palestinian media, is identified with the “Palestinian Union for Journalists and Writers” slogan: “We write by blood for Palestine”. The journalist is a freedom fighter who carries a pen and camera. We have many journalists who were martyred from early days, like Jawhar Hindia and Motiaa Ibrahim and the list is long including Ghassan Kanafani. There is also the assassination of Majid Abo Sharar, who was the chief of the Palestinian United Media, and the two Kamal-s and others, who had written by their blood the pages of Palestinian freedom. The last victim was Omar Nazal, who was arrested while traveling to participate in an international conference.

I say it is very difficult to compare the Palestinian media, which is under the control of the Israeli Occupation, prevented from moving or access the news and even prevented from using cameras. We see how cameras are sprayed with gas and the violent attacks on Palestinian journalists.

Palestine is an occupied country and the last country in the world that is still under occupation. Therefore, the coverage of news by either local or foreign journalists are faced with difficulties due to the laws imposed by the occupation in the occupied territories of 1967 and Jerusalem.

There are several obstacles such as the laws to ban publishing, or ban access under claims of military closed area. There is also the confiscation, and restriction on movement. Personally, the worst for me as photojournalist is the ban on access law i.e. the closed military area. I do not understand it, why declaring a public street, or a farm, or a place where is a demonstration as a closed military zone? I know that military areas are the border areas, or land mine areas, or military compound. But the closed military areas are inside our cities that is under Israeli occupation. There are too many obstacles.

As journalists and the syndicate, we live in a very strange reality that cannot be compared to other communities. The Palestinian journalists live in particular condition due to the Israeli Occupation and the division.

The Palestinian journalist functions on three extreme dimensions. We demand that journalism should be acknowledged as a dangerous field that could impact your life. We consider this a basic right.

There are many attacks against reporters in Gaza by Hamas; there are also some attacks, arrests and summoning to investigation to journalists by the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. Moreover, there are big violations by the Israeli occupation, which is deliberate and its army has green light to attack journalists. The Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said clearly that he will face the Palestinian media and went further to shutting down three radio stations in the West Bank and shutting down Palestine Today TV. He also detained a member of the General Secretariat of the journalists' syndicate.

On all Palestinian fronts, especially in Gaza under Hamas and West Bank under Palestinian Authority, there is no absolute freedom of press and there is a very strict self-censorship, which is stronger than the ruler’s censorship, that journalists practice.

One might find some fearlessness by some newspapers as a result of editor-in-chief or journalists in these newspapers but not due to funder’s or owner’s nature. Therefore, we cannot assume that independent journalism is successful in this frame.

The success depends on the motivation and professionality of the journalists, editors and editors-in-chief. If they want to be professional their journalism will prevail, if they want to be subject to the owner’s or the politician’s agenda.