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PDF FormatIn May 1995, the state security court in Gaza closed al-Watan for three months for publishing “divisive material deemed detrimental to national unity and security” and sentenced one of its editors, Sayyed Abu Musameh, to two years in prison “for writing seditious materials and libeling the Palestinian National Authority and its security apparatus,” an apparent reference to an article comparing torture inflicted by the PA police to that of Israel’s General Security Service (GSS).102 In August of that year, al-Watan was shut down for two months after carrying a story from a British newspaper claiming that Arafat had sold a picture of his infant daughter to a French magazine for a large sum of money.103 Due to periodic closures and the detention of senior editors, al-Watan suspended operations in late 1995. Al-Istiqlal, which was hit with similar sanctions, was reduced to publishing sporadically.104
At the same time the PA was cracking down on recalcitrant publications, Arafat and his associates established pro-government daily papers, whose hidden connections to the PA led them to be labeled “semi-official.” The Ramallah-based al-Hayat al-Jadida, which began as a weekly in early 1995 and switched to a daily format in mid-year, was headed by Nabil Amer, an Arafat loyalist who had been PLO ambassador to Moscow. It built its reputation on exclusives provided by PA sources, and was widely reported to be subsidized by the PLO.105 Al-Ayyam, also based in Ramallah, began publishing in December 1995 with commercial backing from Palestinian businessmen not connected to the PA, but it was edited by Akram Haniyyeh, who had served on Arafat’s Tunis staff as point man for contacts with political leaders in the territories.106 These newspapers joined al-Quds and a-Nahar as the only dailies serving the territories, which meant that by the time elections were held in January 1996, Palestinian readers could choose from a range of options running from solidly pro-Arafat to extremely pro-Arafat.
In addition, Arafat established a government-run monopoly in the electronic media that touted the PA line unabashedly. In July 1994, the day Arafat moved to the territories, the PA-owned Palestinian Broadcasting Authority (PBA) launched the Voice of Palestine radio station in Jericho, and in September 1994 began television broadcasts from Gaza.107 The PBA was headed by longtime Fatah loyalist Radwan Abu Ayyash, and Arafat himself oversaw its operations and housed the television studios in his Gaza presidential headquarters.108 The PA’s electronic media were fulsome in their praise of the government, and virtually every broadcast was headed by an item featuring Arafat’s most recent accomplishments—especially when he was under attack from rival Palestinian groups. After the clash between PA security forces and Hamas supporters in November 1994, the Voice of Palestine invited listeners to express support for Arafat and carried a series of speakers who lauded him as “a hero,” “a symbol,” and “our courageous leader.”109
To prevent competition, which might have been effective against the saccharine propaganda of the official broadcasts, the PA declined to license private radio or television stations and cracked down on the pirate operations that sprang up. Since Israeli and Jordanian radio carried little news about the West Bank and Gaza, residents were left with few alternatives. By May 1995, the Voice of Palestine was the station most frequently listened to by the territories’ residents.110
The media’s bias was most apparent, and telling, during the three-week campaign period before elections. Though campaign regulations required PA media to provide fair and equal coverage of all parties and candidates, in both the race for the presidency and for the Council,111 Arafat was featured by Palestinian radio and television for fourteen and a half hours during this period, compared to just over an hour for his sole competitor, Samiha Halil, a left-wing women’s rights activist.112 Council candidates were virtually shut out of the media entirely, as all 672 of them combined for a mere three-quarters of an hour, of which the lion’s share went to Fatah nominees.113
Arafat and his lieutenants also ensured biased newspaper coverage during the campaign, a task made easier because the PA election law did not apply a fairness doctrine to the print media. According to the Paris-based media watchdog, Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF), 75 of 79 daily newspaper issues during the campaign featured Arafat in a front-page article, picture, or both, whereas Samiha Halil made it onto the front page only twice.114 The Council races were largely blacked out, and what little coverage existed was dominated by Fatah candidates, especially Arafat’s most prominent lieutenants.115 Only 28 independent Council candidates, barely 5 percent of those running, were mentioned in an article or given the opportunity to reach the public through an opinion piece or interview.116 Appropriately enough, Bassem Eid, a Palestinian human rights activist who headed the RSF research team, was kidnapped by PA police on January 3, 1996, shortly after the release of an RSF statement about the media bias; his kidnapping, widely reported in the international media, was not covered by the Palestinian press.
During more than a year before Palestinian elections were held, and culminating with the campaign period, Arab residents of the West Bank and Gaza read favorable coverage of Arafat and his associates in all the daily papers available to them, heard glowing reports about the PA and its leader on government-run radio, and had the opportunity to confirm this picture of the world by turning on the PA’s own television station. Critics and competitors of the PLO and Fatah were blacked out, as were stories about PA corruption and human rights abuses; and newspapers affiliated with the opposition groups, both left-wing and Islamic, were either shut down or so badly hobbled that they could not provide an effective counterweight. The result was that the media, which serves in democracies as a check on the government, acted in Arafat’s PA as the government’s most loyal cheerleader and a check on any potential opposition.
At the same time the PA was cracking down on recalcitrant publications, Arafat and his associates established pro-government daily papers, whose hidden connections to the PA led them to be labeled “semi-official.” The Ramallah-based al-Hayat al-Jadida, which began as a weekly in early 1995 and switched to a daily format in mid-year, was headed by Nabil Amer, an Arafat loyalist who had been PLO ambassador to Moscow. It built its reputation on exclusives provided by PA sources, and was widely reported to be subsidized by the PLO.105 Al-Ayyam, also based in Ramallah, began publishing in December 1995 with commercial backing from Palestinian businessmen not connected to the PA, but it was edited by Akram Haniyyeh, who had served on Arafat’s Tunis staff as point man for contacts with political leaders in the territories.106 These newspapers joined al-Quds and a-Nahar as the only dailies serving the territories, which meant that by the time elections were held in January 1996, Palestinian readers could choose from a range of options running from solidly pro-Arafat to extremely pro-Arafat.
In addition, Arafat established a government-run monopoly in the electronic media that touted the PA line unabashedly. In July 1994, the day Arafat moved to the territories, the PA-owned Palestinian Broadcasting Authority (PBA) launched the Voice of Palestine radio station in Jericho, and in September 1994 began television broadcasts from Gaza.107 The PBA was headed by longtime Fatah loyalist Radwan Abu Ayyash, and Arafat himself oversaw its operations and housed the television studios in his Gaza presidential headquarters.108 The PA’s electronic media were fulsome in their praise of the government, and virtually every broadcast was headed by an item featuring Arafat’s most recent accomplishments—especially when he was under attack from rival Palestinian groups. After the clash between PA security forces and Hamas supporters in November 1994, the Voice of Palestine invited listeners to express support for Arafat and carried a series of speakers who lauded him as “a hero,” “a symbol,” and “our courageous leader.”109
To prevent competition, which might have been effective against the saccharine propaganda of the official broadcasts, the PA declined to license private radio or television stations and cracked down on the pirate operations that sprang up. Since Israeli and Jordanian radio carried little news about the West Bank and Gaza, residents were left with few alternatives. By May 1995, the Voice of Palestine was the station most frequently listened to by the territories’ residents.110
The media’s bias was most apparent, and telling, during the three-week campaign period before elections. Though campaign regulations required PA media to provide fair and equal coverage of all parties and candidates, in both the race for the presidency and for the Council,111 Arafat was featured by Palestinian radio and television for fourteen and a half hours during this period, compared to just over an hour for his sole competitor, Samiha Halil, a left-wing women’s rights activist.112 Council candidates were virtually shut out of the media entirely, as all 672 of them combined for a mere three-quarters of an hour, of which the lion’s share went to Fatah nominees.113
Arafat and his lieutenants also ensured biased newspaper coverage during the campaign, a task made easier because the PA election law did not apply a fairness doctrine to the print media. According to the Paris-based media watchdog, Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF), 75 of 79 daily newspaper issues during the campaign featured Arafat in a front-page article, picture, or both, whereas Samiha Halil made it onto the front page only twice.114 The Council races were largely blacked out, and what little coverage existed was dominated by Fatah candidates, especially Arafat’s most prominent lieutenants.115 Only 28 independent Council candidates, barely 5 percent of those running, were mentioned in an article or given the opportunity to reach the public through an opinion piece or interview.116 Appropriately enough, Bassem Eid, a Palestinian human rights activist who headed the RSF research team, was kidnapped by PA police on January 3, 1996, shortly after the release of an RSF statement about the media bias; his kidnapping, widely reported in the international media, was not covered by the Palestinian press.
During more than a year before Palestinian elections were held, and culminating with the campaign period, Arab residents of the West Bank and Gaza read favorable coverage of Arafat and his associates in all the daily papers available to them, heard glowing reports about the PA and its leader on government-run radio, and had the opportunity to confirm this picture of the world by turning on the PA’s own television station. Critics and competitors of the PLO and Fatah were blacked out, as were stories about PA corruption and human rights abuses; and newspapers affiliated with the opposition groups, both left-wing and Islamic, were either shut down or so badly hobbled that they could not provide an effective counterweight. The result was that the media, which serves in democracies as a check on the government, acted in Arafat’s PA as the government’s most loyal cheerleader and a check on any potential opposition.
VI
To complete the silencing of potential critics, Arafat carried out a campaign of intimidation and cooptation against human rights groups and activists, which was nearly as effective as his efforts against the media. When the Oslo accords were signed, more than half a dozen such groups were flourishing. Of these, the most significant ones were al-Haq and the Palestinian Human Rights Information Center (PHRIC), which focused on the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem; the Gaza Center for Rights and Law, which covered the Gaza Strip; and the Israeli group B’tselem, which operated throughout the territories and employed a cadre of Palestinian field researchers. These organizations, which had been remarkably effective in mobilizing international opinion against Israel’s rule in the territories, had the potential to serve as a check on Arafat by showing his regime to be a systematic abuser of human rights. Moreover, they possessed assets that rendered them partly immune to the public smears, financial blackmail, quiet threats, and occasional sanctions that the PA used so effectively against the media: Leading activists had acquired worldwide prestige, which brought them major media coverage and steady funding from Western governments and foundations, and offered them some protection against harsh measures directed at them.
In addressing this challenge, Arafat used a three-pronged strategy. First, he established a government-sponsored human rights organization to create the impression that independent groups were unnecessary. Second, he induced a few of the leading organizations to eschew public criticism and work quietly with the PA. Finally, he used threats, arrests, and smear campaigns to reduce the motivation and effectiveness of those activists who refused to toe the line. Arafat was also helped by a metamorphosis in the attitudes of many prominent Palestinian rights activists after the signing of the Oslo accords. When Israel governed the territories, it had been possible to pursue two compatible goals: Advancing national aspirations by undermining the Israeli occupation, and protecting individual rights by working to reduce abuses. Once a Palestinian government was established, however, these goals came into conflict, as public condemnation of PA abuses in Gaza and Jericho weakened the claim that Israel should hand over the remainder of the West Bank to Arafat. Faced with this dilemma, many activists concluded that nationalist aims took precedence.
The centerpiece of Arafat’s governmental human rights efforts was the Palestinian Independent Commission for Citizens’ Rights, an ombudsman’s organization charged with the task of monitoring and redressing human rights problems. And at the center of PICCR was Hanan Ashrawi, who for years had used the rhetoric of human rights in condemning Israel’s rule in the territories. As soon as the Oslo agreement was reached in September 1993, Ashrawi founded PICCR and announced that it would serve as an independent check on the new Palestinian government. However, she secured from Arafat an official PLO order making her organization part of his government, and she wrote into the organization’s bylaws that PICCR would be part of the PA.117
More tellingly, during Ashrawi’s tenure as commissioner general from February 1994 through August 1995, PICCR adopted a strategy of carrying out “interventions” rather than public criticism, with the aim of avoiding undue public embarrassment to Arafat’s regime.118 As Ashrawi explained the strategy:
We don’t go public immediately. We diagnose. Then we make our conclusions. Then we identify areas of assistance, of injustice. We do this with a positive spirit, not just to sit back and criticize and go to the media.119
Indeed, in many cases, this “positive spirit” led Ashrawi to go public only to defend Arafat and the PA against charges leveled by human rights activists or Western journalists. Thus, she responded to the case of a Palestinian tortured to death in a PA prison in July 1994 by meeting with Arafat and emerging with the following upbeat assessment: “He was extremely responsive, and he insisted that this issue should be dealt with within the rule of law. There is no attempt to cover up or a hiding of things.”120 As part of this strategy, Arafat gave PICCR access to prisons—a privilege denied to other rights groups—and used Ashrawi’s visits as proof that there was nothing to hide. In September 1994, this strategy paid off in spades when Ashrawi reported to the international media that conditions in prisons had vastly improved, and that in her recent visits there, “Not a single detainee complained of violence.”121
