Inadequately presented interviewees and an anonymous quote in BBC One Guerin report

Orla Guerin's 'Oslo generation' comprises selected political activists.

Following on from Jeremy Bowen’s report on the US administration’s “Peace to Prosperity” plan, viewers of BBC One’s ‘News at Ten’ on January 28th were presented with a report by Orla Guerin which was introduced by presenter Huw Edwards as follows:

Edwards: “At least ten Palestinians have been injured in clashes with Israeli forces amid protests against the plan that’s been unveiled in Washington. The demonstrations in the Israeli occupied West Bank came as the Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas said that his response to the Trump deal was ‘a thousand times no’. Our international correspondent Orla Guerin has spent the day in the West Bank gauging Palestinian opinions on the plan.”

Edwards did not bother to clarify that those opinions were given – and formed – before the details of the plan had even been made public. Guerin began her report at a crossing between Palestinian Authority controlled areas and Israel.

Guerin: “Bethlehem before sunrise. Palestinians rushing to a day’s work in Israel; those lucky enough to have permits. Movement is tightly controlled. That’s life under Israeli occupation. And few here today were expecting a new dawn from the White House.”

“Luck” of course has nothing to do with those work permits. Security considerations and the applicant’s absence of links to terrorism do. Guerin of course made no effort to inform viewers that between 1967 and the year 2000 there were no restrictions on movement and that such measures were only introduced after the Palestinians chose to launch the terror war known as the second Intifada.

She went on with a vox pop interview:

Guerin: “Do you have any hope for the peace plan from Donald Trump? No, no, no says Ibrahim, a father of seven. They don’t want to give the Palestinians their rights. The plan has failed even before it’s announced. A view echoed over coffee in Ramallah. That’s an hour away – or triple that if there are delays at Israeli checkpoints. Here we met some of the Oslo generation; Palestinians who grew up with the peace accords signed in 1993. They say the Trump deal ends that era and it’s time for a new strategy.”

Guerin’s coffee shop interviewees are of course not random Palestinians but inadequately presented selected activists. The first of those – portrayed by the BBC as a “community organiser” is Fadi Quran who works as campaigns director for the political NGO Avaaz and is fond of using the baseless ‘apartheid’ smear.

Quran: “It finally spells the death of the peace process that many assumed would lead to a Palestinian state and instead opens the door for us as a new generation to begin building a type of resistance movement based on what Nelson Mandela did.”

Guerin: “So this is the end of the peace process as we know it?”

Quran: “This is the end of what I would call the illusion of a peace process.”

Guerin then turned to an interviewee presented as a “writer”. Mariam Barghouti has had articles published at anti-Israel outlets such as ‘Middle East Eye’, ‘Mondoweiss’ and ‘MEMO’. Erasing the fact that Ramallah has been under exclusive Palestinian Authority control since 1995, Guerin asked:

Guerin: “Do you think you think you will still be living under occupation in ten years’ time, in twenty years’ time?”

Barghouti: “Everything, all Israeli policies against Palestinians are happening at such a high speed that it’s terrifying to think of where we’re gonna be five years from now.”

Guerin: “And tonight on the streets of Ramallah, a vow to return to the Intifada – the Palestinian uprising. The crowd here was small; sand and fury perhaps but also weariness and resignation. Well, Palestinian leaders have called for more protests tomorrow at what they have dubbed the fraud of the century. They have few other cards to play.”

Obviously Guerin does not consider negotiation to be one of the “cards” available to the Palestinians. She closed her report with an anonymous quote.

Guerin: “America and Israel are now moving in lockstep and the deal unveiled today has sent a stark message to the Palestinians. In the words of one analyst it boils down to this: you’ve lost, get over it.”

That unnamed analyst is Robert Malley of the NGO International Crisis Group (ICG). At least we now know what genre of Middle East analysis Orla Guerin prefers.

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