Guardian corrects erroneous West Bank ‘annexation’ claim

An Aug. 17th AP article published at the Guardian (“Israel and UAE open phone link after historic deal”) opened with the following sentence:

A telephone service between the United Arab Emirates and Israel has begun working as the two countries opened diplomatic ties, part of a deal brokered by the US that required Israel to suspend its contentious plan to annex the West Bank.

As we noted in our complaint to editors, Guardian journalists reporting on the proposed annexation have made clear that the abandoned plan would only have involved the application of Israeli law to parts of the West Bank – roughly 30%. The way the sentence reads makes it seem as if all of the West Bank would be ‘annexed’.

We also pointed out that the original AP article deviates in the language used in the Guardian version:

Telephone calls began ringing Sunday between the United Arab Emirates and Israel, marking the first concrete step of a U.S.-brokered diplomatic deal between the nations that required Israel to halt plans to annex land sought by the Palestinians.

Though, likely because of the summer holidays, we weren’t informed via email by editors that they were correcting it (as is normally the case), we recently learned that, on Aug. 19th, the article was indeed amended.

Here’s the revised sentence:

A telephone service between the United Arab Emirates and Israel has begun working as the two countries opened diplomatic ties, part of a deal brokered by the US that required Israel to suspend its contentious plan to annex parts of the West Bank.

The following addendum was also added:

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