This is a cross-post from BBC Watch.
Back in May, in a report concerning Palestinian rejection of the as yet unpublished US peace initiative, BBC News told its audiences that:
“It is unclear whether the [US] plan will be based on the so-called “two-state solution” – a long-standing formula for resolving the conflict by creating a Palestinian state alongside Israel, with Jerusalem a shared capital.
The Palestinians and most of the international community support this approach in principle, while the Israeli leadership is cooler towards it.” [emphasis added]
As was noted here at the time, the BBC has been promoting the theme of Palestinian support for a two-state solution at least since December 2016 – while amplifying the PLO’s interpretation of that shorthand.
“In addition to avoiding the obviously inconvenient fact that the Palestinians have repeatedly rejected offers based on the two-state solution which the BBC claims they “support”, the BBC’s implication that there is one unified Palestinian voice which supports the two-state solution is clearly inaccurate and misleading. […]
…the BBC’s wording does not inform readers that an essential part of the two-state solution is the concept (repeatedly endorsed by the Quartet) of ‘two states for two peoples’ – a definition which would require Palestinian recognition of Israel as the Jewish state – and that Fatah and the Palestinian Authority have repeatedly refused to do so.”
So what really is the approach of the PLO/Fatah/Palestinian Authority clique to the idea of a two-state solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict? Earlier this month the University of Chicago’s ‘Pearson Institute’ held a conference in Berlin. One of the speakers was Husam Zomlot – currently head of the Palestinian mission to the UK – who readers readers may recall gave a briefing to BBC journalists just before the Bahrain economic workshop in June and who has been a regular contributor to BBC content.
Read the rest of this post here.
