Empty Promises: A Response to the Latest Ceasefire in the Israel-Palestine ConflictLawrence Zieske

Ethics in Development of a Global Environment Bruce LusignanMarch 11, 2005

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“A lasting process of whatever kind, peaceful or otherwise, must involve populations and

not only leaders.”

-Dr. Laura Drake

On February 8, 2005, the Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian

Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas met at summit meeting in Egypt with Egypt’s

president and Jordan’s king. Following the meeting, Israel and Palestine announced a

ceasefire. This agreement was sealed by promises that Israel would end its military

actions against Palestinians and that Palestinian militant groups would discontinue attacks

in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. Obviously, Abbas’ ability to

implement this relies on whether powerful militant groups will back his bid; these groups

want total Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, and the

"right of return" of Palestinian refugees to Israel. Israel has instead offered to release 900

prisoners, pull back troops from some West Bank cities and stop pursuing wanted men.

Within the same day, the Palestinian militant group Hamas declared that it was not bound

by the truce. Hamas representative Osama Hamdan said in order for a truce to be

successful, Israel must release Palestinian prisoners and make a clear commitment to

“halt all kinds of aggression against the Palestinian people.” He contended those

conditions were not met at the summit. Since then, only Hamas has lived up to its

statements from February 8. On February 9, Israeli military actions accounted for three

Palestinian deaths. Hamas retaliated the day after that, firing rockets at a settlement in

Gaza, causing property damage. Both sides are interested in ending the strife, but neither

is willing to sacrifice demands that have sparked the volatile environment. After decades

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of bloodshed, the “peace process” and “ceasefires” are still just empty phrases. The

world has seen similar struggles for peace or freedom in other countries, namely Ireland

and South Africa. The accords that have been recently reached in these two countries can

hopefully serve as paradigms for the Israel-Palestinian situation.

Israel and Palestinian territories have been and continue to be ravaged by military

occupation; suicide bombings and militia resistance; discrimination and oppression

similar to South Africa’s Apartheid; economic disparity; displacement of communities

and ethnic cleansing; and countless other incidents of aggression. We can discuss

resolutions that could bring about peace, but we must first examine the factors that

strengthen the endurance of the conflict. The tensions are heavily rooted in historical

aggressions that Arabs and Jews of the region have committed against each other. But

past conflicts and stubbornness cannot be solely responsible for the stalemate of peace;

other countries with histories of internal hate have moved forward, and wars are not

started with the intention of never finishing them. The United States has been heavily

involved in the Middle East peace processes over the last few decades; the U.S. has

actively prolonged the violence by favoring Israel in all negotiations and by excluding the

U.N. and other world powers from peace conferences. The media paints a skewed

rendition of the plight in Israel; it highlights Palestinian aggression calling it terrorism

while shying away from reporting the Apartheid imposed by Israel. Terrorism is a

response to oppression and military occupation. Furthermore, economics play a role in

the urgency of peace and peace making policies.

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History

The Israeli-Palestinian struggle is one of the most enduring and explosive of all the

world’s conflicts. The land that now encompasses Israel and Palestinian territories has

been conquered and re-conquered since Biblical times, and the tensions that preceded the

violence we see frequently in U.S. news coverage root back to over 100 years ago. Here

is a brief timeline of events that have lead up to and prolonged the turbulent co-existence

of the people of Israel and Palestine:

1890s – 1914: In 1897, the First Zionist Congress met to discuss ideas of Theodor

Herzl’s 1896 book The Jewish State. Upset with European anti-Semitism, Herzl wanted

Jews to have their own state. The Congress created the World Zionist Organization to

establish a home secured by public law for the Jewish people in Palestine. Before Herzl’s

publication and World Zionist Organization, few Zionist immigrants had started arriving

in the area, but between 1987 and 1903, 25,000 Jews, mostly from Eastern Europe,

moved in to live alongside about half a million Arab residents in what was then part of

the Turkish Ottoman Empire. By 1914, another 40,000 immigrants had arrived in the

region.

1910s: World War I ended the rule of the Turkish Ottoman Empire; Arab forces backed

by Britain drove out the Ottomans. Britain occupied the region at the end of the war in

1918 and was assigned as the mandatory power by the League of Nations in 1920.

During this transition, three key pledges were made regarding the land: (1) The British

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Commissioner in Egypt promised the Arab leadership post-war independence for former

Ottoman Arab provinces; (2) At the same time, Britain and France divided the region

under their joint control; (3) the British Foreign Minister Arthur Balfour committed

Britain to work towards “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for Jewish

people,” in a letter to Zionists that became known as the Balfour Declaration.

1920s-1930s: This period saw hundreds of thousands of Jews emigrating to British

Mandate Palestine, provoking unrest in the Arab community. Zionist-Arab antagonism

boiled into massive violence starting in 1929. Zionist groups began orchestrating attacks

on Palestinian and British targets with the aim of “liberating” Palestine. In 1937, Britain

recommended portioning the land into a Jewish state (about a third of British Mandate

Palestine) and an Arab one. Palestinian and Arab representatives rejected this and

demanded an end to immigration; violence continued in the wake of these demands until

opposition was crushed with reinforcement from the UK in 1938.

1940s: After World War II, Britain handed over the responsibility for solving the Zionist-

Arab problem over to the UN. After hundreds of thousands of Jews fleeing Nazi

persecution, Jewish immigrants made up a third of the population and owned about 6% of

the land. Six million Jews had been killed in the Holocaust during World War II. The

UN voted to create a partition that would give over half of Palestine to a Jewish state—

both Arab and Jewish sides prepared for coming confrontations by mobilizing forces and

staging attacks on territories held by the other side. Jewish forces, backed by the Irgun

and Lehi militant groups made more progress, seizing areas allotted to the Jewish state

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and also conquering substantial territories allotted for the Palestinian one. Irgun and Lehi

massacred scores of inhabitants of the village of Deir Yassin, creating a panic that caused

hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to flee to Lebanon, Egypt, and the West Bank. The

State of Israel was proclaimed on 14 May 1948; thousands of Palestinians had been

displaced.

1960s-current: In the 1967 War, Israel seized Gaza and the Sinai from Egypt in the south

and the Golan Heights from Syria in the north. It also pushed Jordanian forces out of the

West Bank and East Jerusalem. The territorial gains doubled the area of land controlled

by Israel. The victory heralded a new age of confidence and optimism for Israel and its

supporters. Since this victory, Israel has established its dominance over Palestine. The

U.S. has sided with Israel since and does not allow other world powers to become

involved in peace processes between Israel and Palestine. Such exclusivity has benefited

Israel in all peace talks and agreements and strengthened Israel’s dominance over

Palestine.

The Role of the U.S. in the Peace Process

Four factors have characterized the American diplomatic effort since the signing

of the Oslo accords on the White House lawn in 1993. The U.S. has ideological-strategic

relations with Israel. Internal political pressure, especially from the Israeli lobby, the

most renowned lobby for its capacity to promote, damage, or block the political careers

of presidents and congressmen, influences the actions of said politicians. The

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preoccupation with establishing an American-dominated zone of trade and security

cooperation in the Eastern Mediterranean with the participation of Turkey provides an

economic pressure on the U.S. to cooperate with Israel. The international community,

American domestic legal authorities, and the UN are kept out of the process of conflict

resolution (Bishara, 2001). The U.S. showed empathy toward Israelis at the end of World

War II in response to the holocaust. U.S. pressures on Britain to divide up the British

Mandate Palestine into a Jewish and Palestinian state had showed this, but since then the

U.S. has allowed and sometimes aided the systematic oppression of Palestinians.

The “peace process” has been heavily favorable toward Israeli concerns, and

different U.S. policies have had different reasons to have the same interests—to back

Israel and its efforts and to exclude other nations from interfering. In the 1960s, the U.S.

helped Israel conquer most of Palestine and surrounding regions, ignoring UN laws that

define Israel’s occupation of the lands conquered as illegal. In the 1980s, President

Reagan said publicly that he did not think Israeli settlements in Palestine were illegal but

recognized them as “an obstacle to peace.” After the Gulf War, President Bush tried to

renew the peace process, and in 1993 the Clinton administration fostered the famous but

ineffective Oslo agreement. The timing and situation for the Oslo agreement was highly

pro-Israel. Agreements were made among only the U.S., the Israeli leader Rabin, and the

PLO leader Arafat, so the U.S. and Israel had the power to veto any decision. It was right

after the Gulf War which left Palestine crippled financially, so Arafat needed to make

something happen. Such coercive diplomacy gave Israel breathing room to maintain

occupation. Palestine agreed to recognize Israel as a state, and the Oslo process required

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Palestinians to make peace with their Israeli occupiers while occupation still existed. The

Oslo agreement provided a first step toward but a long journey to peace.

The George W. Bush administration has stated its pro-Israel stance by considering

any show of solidarity with Iraq by Palestinians as an unfriendly gesture toward the

United States (Bishara, 2001).

Media Irresponsibility and Its Manipulation of Public Opinion

The US media is preemptively undermining any public opinion that would oppose

the nation’s actions in the Israeli-Palestinian crisis by not accurately and appropriately

informing viewers. While the media doesn’t report some important issues whatsoever,

others are covered with an obvious bias. Whether they know it or not, US journalists

don't always provide an accurate and fair account of every issue, and this constitutes a

major problem in a country where the media is the number one source of information for

the average citizen. If the information that citizen receives is incorrect, or incomplete, it

hinders their ability to obtain an accurate worldview. The information and slant that they

do receive will, of course, affect votes during election time. Thus, this sub-optimal press

performance is threatening not only our democracy but the rights of people who are

directly affected by our government’s policies, as well. Press coverage regarding the

Israeli-Palestinian conflict has long been attacked, on every level, by every side. This is a

testament to the volatility of the issue. Yet the majority of the world seems to see one

side of the issue, while the US media seems to see a different side. Once the history of

news coverage is researched, however, the statistics and comparisons don’t lie: the

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coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by the US media is incomplete and biased.

In a study on New York Times articles covering Israel and Palestine, 78 out of 81

articles, or 96%, mentioned an act of violence. In fact, 179 acts of violence were

mentioned in total. This means, on average, each article reported over two acts of

violence. One might assume that, because the area is flooded in turmoil, this is, of

course, going to be reflected in the news media. Realistically, the claim that 96% of

newsworthy events in a region to be about violence, bloodshed, and conflict is ludicrous.

The Times, not unlike other media outlets, is simply choosing to cover these events. Of

the 179 acts of violence mentioned, 113, or 63% were attributed to Palestinians. 66 were

attributed to Israelis. When these incidents were reported, they were also reported in a

specific pattern. Israeli was depicted as "retaliating", either explicitly using that word, or

mentioning their attacks as a consequence of Palestinian violence, in 68 cases.

Palestinians were described as the retaliator in only 3 cases. This pattern of reporting

clearly depicts the Palestinians as the aggressors continuing the violence and the Israelis

as having no other option but to defend themselves. Moreover, the numbers show that

the articles mentioned an Israeli retaliation (68) more than Israeli acts of violence (66).

This means that some articles described a Palestinian aggression, usually in detail, and

then simply stated that, in the following days, "Israel responded." Finally, only about

20% of the articles put events they described in context. That is, they gave reasonable,

detailed explanations of other related events, motivations, sentiments and opposing

opinions. Lastly, only one article mentioned anything about the long-term history, and

origins, of the conflict and it was only by saying that it has "been underway since 1967."

The history and origins of the conflict are integral in understanding anything about the

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current situation. The Times coverage, during a period when news was pouring out of the

region, provided little, if any, context and history.

Other statistics were relevant in showing bias. Israeli victims were four times as

likely as Palestinian victims to be identified by name, age, and other information about

them, therefore humanizing them. Of 48 articles mentioning "West Bank" or "Gaza",

only 2 referred to them in any way as illegal, occupied, or even disputed. Moreover, in

one of those 2 articles, “illegal” was from a UN security council resolution quotation;

thus, it didn't actually represent the view of the Times. The article also ended with the

sentence: "[UN] Assembly resolutions have often been a vehicle for criticizing Israel."

Language plays a major role in the media mess. Certain words have become taboo for

American journalists; in14 articles, Palestinian aggressors were regarded as "terrorists."

Israeli aggressors never were; they were simply called “troops.” “Crossfire” is another

loaded media term. When a Palestinian kills an Israeli, it is portrayed as another viscous

attack. On the other hand, Robert Fisk, veteran Middle East correspondent of the London

Independent, says, “When I read the word ‘crossfire,’ it almost always means that the

Israelis have killed an innocent person.” From the Times, one article read, "In the city

center, near the traffic circle called Al Manara Square, a crowd was gathering for the

funeral of a Palestinian man who had been killed by Israeli bullets this week." An Israel

casualty is never reported as “killed by Palestinian bullets”, but usually “slain,” “brutally

attacked,” or “killed by an angry mob.” One article reporting Palestinian casualties

simply mentioned that Israel “struck Palestinian targets.”

Other US media outlets follow a similar, skewed pattern covering these issues as

the Times. A statistical examination of the San Francisco Chronicle’s news coverage of

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the first six months of the second Intifada, Sept. 29, 2000 through March 31, 2001

indicate significantly inaccurate coverage. Results showed a vast disparity in the

likelihood of a death receiving coverage based on the ethnicity of the person killed. For

the first six months of the current uprising, the San Francisco Chronicle reported on

111% of Israeli deaths and only 38% of Palestinian deaths in the headlines and/or the first

paragraphs of the 251 articles on the topic. This discrepancy was even more exaggerated

in the Chronicle’s coverage of the killing of children. During the six-month study period,

Palestinian children were being killed at a far higher rate than Israeli children-- 27 % of

Palestinians killed were under 18 (93 children), while only 6 % of Israelis killed were

minors (4 children). Yet Chronicle headlines and/or first paragraphs reported the killing

of only 5 Palestinian children, while headlines and/or first paragraphs reported 6 Israeli

children killed (one Israeli teenager’s death was reported three times). In other words,

the Chronicle covered 150 % of Israeli children's deaths and only 5 % of Palestinian

children's deaths, giving readers the impression that approximately equal numbers of

youths had been killed on both sides. Thus, while the death of an Israeli child was

prioritized above the killing of an adult, the killing of a Palestinian child was de-

prioritized, despite the abnormally high percentage Palestinian children made up of the

casualties. One would expect the fact that Palestinian children constituted such a high

percentage of deaths to have been considered newsworthy in itself, not the reverse. Also,

only 1.2 % of stories about Israel/Palestine contained information about U.S. aid to Israel

and the Palestinians, despite the fact that such aid is an integral factor in the current

conflict, and that aid to Israel accounts for approximately 30 percent of total U.S.

international aid expenditures.

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Stories and images of events, that flood the evening news and morning papers, are

those of violence, suicide bombings, and panic, all without a historical context. Without

knowledge of the history, informed judgments about these news stories can’t be made. In

fact, many people believe that the conflict is between extremist religious fanatics, and

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that the hostility between Jews and Arabs is as old as the land. It's easy to see how the

media perpetuates this idea; one Times article read, "How quickly the peacemaking

relationship can give way to the basest, barest ethnic and religious animosities." The

Arabs don't hate the Jews because they are Jews, they hate them because they are illegally

occupying their land and denying them basic human rights! The Glasgow University

Media Group did a study in which they found, “If you don't understand the Middle East

crisis it might be because you are watching it on TV news. TV news scores high on

images of fighting, violence and drama but is low on explanation.” They interviewed

multiple groups, totaling around 400 people, and asked them questions about the Arab-

Israeli conflict. “Replies showed that they had absorbed the 'main' message of the news,

of conflict, violence and tragedy, but that many people had little understanding of the

reasons for the conflict and its origins.” Contributing to this, the study notes that

journalists often use oblique language and offer no explanations. In one report, a

journalist says: “The basic raw disagreements remain - the future, for example, of this

city Jerusalem, the future of Jewish settlements and the returning refugees.” Such a

statement requires, for example, knowledge of the refugee matter. In a sample of 300,

only 8% knew that the Palestinians were the refugees, and were displaced from their

homes and land when the State of Israel was established. Regarding the “occupation”

71% did not know that it was the Israelis that were occupying the Palestinian’s land. 9%

knew that Israel was the occupier and that the settlers were Israeli. In fact, more

participants (11%) believed that the Palestinians were the ones unjustly occupying the

territories. The problem is that reporters inside the occupied territories send back live

reports of Palestinians “looking for confrontation”, throwing rocks at, and storming,

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Israeli military outposts. They never discuss the Palestinians’ grievances or the fact that

they have been surrounded in their own cities, by Israeli military checkpoints, for years.

They never offer the idea that the Palestinians might be angry because they can’t move

around in their own hometown, visit a friend, or go to school or work without going

through one of these intimidating, degrading Israeli checkpoints. As the Glasgow study

found, “A news journalism which seeks neutrality should not endorse any point of view,

but there were many departures from this principle.”

The question that lingers is: why does the US media have this unfair bias? The

bias can most likely be attributed to a number of factors. Israel has a huge and extremely

influential “public relations” sector. Israeli government agencies and representatives

make sure that the Israeli “spin” gets conveyed to the Western media outlets. In fact, the

largest group of Western journalists, outside of the Western world, is in Jerusalem. As

stated at the UN conference, “The Israelis have done a superb job with the use of words

to shape understanding and deal with the subconscious.” The Palestinians don’t do as

good of a job with media relations and control. Market driven journalism is also partly to

blame. Violence and conflict sell. These are the easiest stories to report, without much

in-depth analysis or background, and they attract viewers’ attention. Special interest

lobbying is a very influential part of Washington politics and Israel’s staunch supporters

in the US, regardless of their numbers, have a very loud voice. To some extent, this is

similar in the UK. “Fortune Magazine rates one of the many lobby organizations

working on behalf of Israel, AIPAC, as the fourth most powerful lobby in Washington. In

total, many experts rate the pro-Israel interest group as the most powerful lobby in

Washington.” Some suggest that the growing number of neo-conservatives attaining high

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ranks in the White House, State Department and Pentagon may be pushing a pro-Israel

agenda.

Terrorism and Suicide Attacks

Suicide terrorism seems to be the hot news topic lately. Every week, it is likely

that articles will cover a new Palestinian suicide bombing of Israeli citizens. Many U.S.

citizens are either confused or believe misconceptions about these suicide bombings. Let

us examine the nature and provocation of the acts of aggression and follow with a

discussion of how to influence the use of less violent tactics in the Israel-Palestine crisis.

The question that most people would have in reaction to these terrorist tactics is

probably this: why would someone kill himself (typically the suicide bomber has been

male, but women have recently become volunteers) in a violent and painful way to kill

and injure other people? Information collected about individuals has shown that for

predicting who will become a suicide bomber there are few characteristics and there is no

personality profile (Suicide Terrorism, Merari). It is widely believed that suicide

bombers are psychopaths or that they are suicidal to begin with; terrorist groups that

organize suicide bombing are religious fanatics; or that the individuals who sacrifice

themselves have suffered some close personal loss at the hands of their enemy. In

actuality, the average suicide bomber is a 21-year-old, single, middle-class male with

some college education. He is not a political or religious extremist, and he usually has

known friends who have been murdered or jailed but not a close family member.

Palestinian refugees are more likely to volunteer than the rest of the Palestinian

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population. Group sympathies and public opinion are more indicative of the danger of

suicide attacks more so than religious stances or incidents of personal suffering (Merari).

How do seemingly ordinary young men decide to martyr themselves to kill

innocent people? The development of suicide bombers is a result of societal forces and

social influence. Data collected from suicide terrorist trainers and surviving would-be

suicide bombers identifies the process by which suicide bombers are “made.”

Indoctrination, group commitment, and a personal pledge are the three main elements

organizations use to prepare bombers. Although, the volunteer has convinced himself of

the cause he is willing to die for, throughout the preparation Hamas indoctrination

includes nationalist and religious themes to strengthen the motivation. Group

commitment increases the difficulty a volunteer would have in changing his mind

because he does not want to let the group or cause down, and he is further pressured to

hold up his end of the bargain. The personal commitment is the final step in which the

suicide bomber resigns himself to die. He films a video declaring his intentions to

complete the mission and writes a letter to his family. Between the time of these rituals

and the suicide, this individual is known as the “living martyr” (Merari).

Understanding how a group’s influence creates these living martyrs still does not

answer why suicide bombings occur. The question that must be asked is why do militant

groups like Hamas send individuals out to commit suicide terrorism? Israel’s oppressive

actions have bred the cause that young Palestinians are willing to die for: freedom and

home to call their own. Contrary to what media reports lead us to believe, since the

Jewish state was formed, Palestinians have been living in quasi-Apartheid. Living under

Israeli occupation, Palestinians do not have the right to exercise promises of sovereignty

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that have been granted in peace agreements, or even the right to move about freely;

Israeli military checkpoints litter the Palestinian territories. The Israeli government, the

U.S., and big businesses have kept the Palestinian economy inferior to Israel’s; a higher

poverty rate and higher percentage of infant deaths are directly related.1 Public support

suicide operations and the political clout that they wield affects Hamas’ and other groups’

willingness to use these tactics and the number of volunteers for the missions. Hamas has

had an obvious influence on Israel-Palestinian peace process and on the decisions of the

PA’s president, Mahmoud Abbas. These suicide terrorists, who consider themselves

freedom fighters, act within the approval of their constituents. For example, in the last

six months of 1995, Hamas refrained from carrying out suicide attacks because its

leadership realized that such actions would have had an adverse effect on the

organization’s popularity (Merari). Since the second Intifada started in 2000, the

resounding majority of Palestine’s public has supported suicide attacks.

In ending this discussion of the suicide attacks in the Israel-Palestine conflict, I

would be remiss to not mention the concept of state terrorism. I have referred to Hamas

as a terrorist organization, but the difference between freedom fighting and terrorism is in

the eye of the beholder. The use of violence and terror, often against noncombatants, to

instigate political change is considered terrorism. Currently, the use of the word

terrorism almost always refers to anti-state violence, despite the evidence that state-

committed, or state terrorism is by far the greater danger (Psychology of Terrorism,

Stout). The state terrorism committed by Israel has taken more lives and displaced more

people than Palestinian militant groups’ attacks. Also, aggressions by Israel’s military

have been the direct provocation of suicide attacks by Hamas and similar groups. Since

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the ceasefire on 8 February 2005, the Israeli military has performed strategic

assassinations of Hamas leaders, killing women, children, and innocent citizens in the

process; militant groups have responded with suicide attacks. Israeli soldiers were this

first to break the most recent ceasefire killing three Palestinians within twenty four hours

of the agreement, a fact that was less covered by newspapers than Hamas’ announcement

that they were not bound by the ceasefire since they had been left out of the decision

process.

Israel’s military will not put an end to suicide attacks; the public support of

suicide attacks needs to be reduced to put an end to the anti-state violence. Palestinians

must be convinced that there are more effective means to obtain the freedoms that they

are currently being denied. Unfortunately, this idea will be increasingly difficult the

longer Israel occupies and oppresses Palestinians, and the continued support of Israel’s

decisions by the U.S. and the media’s bias in favor of Israel make such a public opinion

change seem more distant. The U.N., Russia, and the E.U., powers that are not biased

toward allowing Israel’s Apartheid to continue, can influence such an opinion change if

allowed into the peace process. Until Palestine receives more support and sympathy from

world powers, the suicide attacks will most likely persist.

The Business of Peace

In this political process of peace, business and economic factors are, of course,

key influences in decisions. Studies have shown that the engagement of businesspeople

in the peace process and the nature of business ties between Israelis and Palestinians (as

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well as Jordanians) have failed to strengthen and advance peace in the Middle East.

Instead, they weakened political and economic stability and thus contributed to the failure

of the peace process (Bouillon, 2004).

The peace process itself is largely driven by the influential business elites. Israeli

businesspeople are eager to end Arab boycotts, and Palestinians remain largely dependent

on Israel. The resulting nature of cooperation, though, disproportionately benefits Israel

and strengthens its dominance. The following two tables reveal such disparities:

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Peaceful regional co-existence will follow from justice and equality on the

domestic level.

Conclusion

We have discussed many factors of the Israel-Palestine that reveal this latest

ceasefire to be an empty and ineffective gesture toward peace. It forces an oppressed

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Palestine accept the continuation of Israel’s Apartheid without receiving anything in

return. Due to public opinion and the sentiment that peace negotiations are fruitless,

suicide bombings will continue to occur. The stubborn and Israeli-biased U.S.

government and Israeli government refuse to allow the U.N., Russia, and the E.U. to take

part in the peace process. And also in favor of Israel, business relations in Israel and

Palestine strengthen Israel’s dominance over Palestine and further hinders the possibility

of peace.

Peace is not impossible, but it will not be reached under the current

circumstances. Suicide bombings will cease if the Palestinian public retracts its support,

but currently, nothing else seems to influence political actions. The sympathy and

support of Palestinians from world powers such as the U.N., Russia, and the E.U. can

change such bleak opinions and exacerbate the peace. The media needs to report the state

terrorism committed by Israel to change public opinion in the U.S. of the situation; a shift

in U.S. opinion could influence a shift in the U.S. government’s biased stance. This

ceasefire seems to benefit Israel and its oppression of Palestinians and is thus taking a

step away from a peaceful co-existence in Israel-Palestine.

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ENDNOTES

. (2002). Analysis of Media on Israel-Palestine. If Americans Knew: What every

American should know about Israel/Palestine. Retrieved March, 2005, from

http://www.ifamericansknew.org/media/.

. (2005). In Depth: A History of Conflict, Israel and the Palestinians. Retrieved

March 2005, from http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/middle_east/03/v3_ip_timeline/

html/default.stm.

Bishara, Marwan. (2001). Palestine/Israel: Peace or Apartheid. New York: Zed Books.

Bouillon, Markus. (2004). The Peace Business: Money and Power in the Palestine-Israel

Conflict. New Yorl: I.B. Tauris.

Finkelstein, N. G. (2003). Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict. New York:

Verso.

Gidron, B., Katz, S., & Hasenfeld, Y. (2002). Mobilizing for Peace. New York: Oxford

University Press.

Jelen, Marcelo. (2005). Conflict Could Be Resolved Without Ceasefire, Says Palestinian

Analyst. Inter Press Service News Agency. Retrieved March, 2005, from

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http://www.ipsnews.net/africa/interna.asp?idnews=27716.

Nettnin, Sonia. (2005). U.S. Media Coverage of Israel-Palestine Conflict. Retrieved

March, 2005, from http://www.palestinechronicle.com/story.php?

sid=2005021704442228.