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CAMERA has prompted correction of a front-page photo caption at The Wall Street Journal May 15 which erroneously referred to disputed West Bank land as “Palestinian territory in the West Bank.” The caption accompanying the photograph, headline “Pompeo begins Talks in Israel,” had erred:
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, making a rare overseas visit amid the pandemic, pressed a U.S. peace plan that lets Israel annex some Palestinian territory in the West Bank. He met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
A 1957 map in The New York Times depicts the West Bank as part of Jordan.
Israel captured the West Bank in 1967 from the Kingdom of Jordan, which had occupied the territory since its 1948-49 war with Israel. Prior to 1948, the West Bank, like Israel, was administered by the United Kingdom.
In the 1990s, when Israeli and Palestinian leaders signed the Oslo peace agreements, the sides agreed that the status of the West Bank would be decided in negotiations between the sides, and today its rightful and ultimate disposition remains under contention.
Thus, the West Bank areas under discussion are disputed and their ultimate disposition has yet to be decided. They are not “Palestinian territory” as numerous other leading publications have acknowledged. The New York Times recently corrected the error, as have The Los Angeles Times and Washington Post in the past.
In response to communication from CAMERA, editors commendably published the following correction in yesterday’s print edition:
A Trump administration Israeli-Palestinian peace plan would allow Israel to annex parts of the occupied West Bank. In some editions Thursday, a caption with a Page One photo incorrectly referred to those parts of the West Bank as Palestinian territory. Under the Olso accords, sovereignty over the West Bank is disputed, pending a final peace settlement.