The BBC website ran three articles, on August 19, 20 and 21, about the Israeli government decision to open up tenders for the construction of homes on the site known as E1, east of Jerusalem. E1 has been the subject of considerable controversy for years, and as such it makes sense for the BBC to report on the recent developments. However, once again when it comes to Israel the BBC’s stated commitment to accuracy and impartiality completely evaporates.
Across its E1 reporting the same mantra repeats.
The development would in effect divide the West Bank in two.
However, this is just manifestly untrue as a statement of geography. E1 does not extend from the Jordan river to Jerusalem and therefore does not bisect the West Bank.
The BBC’s defence to this kind of inconvenient reality may be that qualifying statements like “in effect” or “effectively” or even “opposition argued” make the absolute untrue claim reasonable, but is this true?
No. Unfortunately for the BBC its guidelines on accuracy explicitly mention “audience expectations”. When it comes to the geography of the West Bank, this means that their duty to accuracy must take into account the understanding of the average British audience.
If, for example, the British government were to wake up one day and decide to build a city on the Firth of Forth, and the Scottish Government opposed it because it would hugely disrupt ease of movement from the central belt of Scotland up into the Highlands, a British audience would have enough knowledge and contextual competence to know that the planned development wouldn’t literally bisect Scotland.
The phrase “effectively cut in two” would be a creative hyperbole designed to make a point about traffic disruption.
They do not have that knowledge about the West Bank. So, when the BBC says “effectively bisecting the West Bank” that statement becomes much more literal. BBC journalists have a duty to clarity when it comes to unfamiliar geography.
In all the acreage of space it gives to the uncritical repetition of powerful and deeply partisan political lobbies such as the UN, the BBC also entirely omits the decades of peace process negotiations relevant to E1. Firstly, Oslo. As so often in BBC coverage, the Oslo Accords fade into obscurity and the mutually agreed arrangement that area C, in which E1 falls, is an area under Israeli civil and security control is entirely omitted. Perhaps even more interesting though, is the decision, in reporting the political opinion, that E1 would “block the establishment of a Palestinian state”.
This completely ignores that in both the Camp David and Olmert two-state solution offers, E1 would have fallen squarely inside Israel, alongside a Palestinian state – crucial context, whose omission makes the reporting misleading. It is valid to report the argument of these organisations, but when the negotiating history itself demonstrates that Israeli retention of this area has previously not prevented the possible establishment of a viable Palestinian state, the editorial decision not to question those statements with opposing facts becomes problematic at best.
The result of all this obfuscation and editorial sleight of hand is that the BBC fails in its most basic duty to its audiences, which is to report what this controversy is really about; the Arab claim to Jerusalem.
E1 does not, as we have established, either cut the West Bank in half or prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state. What it does do is cement Israeli territorial presence along the Ma’ale Adumim – Jerusalem axis, and complicate Palestinian territorial presence along the Ramallah – Jerusalem axis. This is tied up in the insistence that Israel must surrender part of its capital city, including the holiest site in Judaism, to the Palestinians in order that they may have a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital. This is a maximalist demand, not a fact of nature.
A Palestinian state with Ramallah as its capital would be no less a Palestinian state than one centered on the Jewish surrender of Temple Mount. However, for the BBC Palestinian maximalist demands are treated as law, while Israeli maximalisms, such as the present government’s stated opposition to the establishment of any Palestinian state, are treated as crimes.
The BBC has duties to its audience, set down in clear editorial guidelines. The pressing question is why does it continually break them on reporting around Israel, and why do those failures only tend in one direction.