The BBC’s ‘one no of Khartoum’

We have previously documented the fact that over the years, BBC audiences have been told very little indeed about the Arab League’s September 1967 Khartoum Resolutions:

WHAT DOES THE BBC NEWS WEBSITE TELL AUDIENCES ABOUT THE KHARTOUM RESOLUTIONS?

REVISITING BBC PORTRAYAL OF THE KHARTOUM RESOLUTION

On February 2nd the BBC News website published a report about a visit to Sudan by Israel’s foreign minister on that day during which talks were held on the topic of normalisation of relations between the two countries.

Headlined ‘Israel says Sudan peace deal to be signed in Washington’, that report by Raffi Berg tells BBC audiences that:

“The UAEBahrain and Morocco have officially normalised relations with Israel since 2020 as part of the US-brokered Abraham Accords.

Historically, members of the Arab League had refused to recognise Israel, a factor in perpetuating the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Egypt became the first Arab country to sign a peace treaty with Israel in 1979, followed by Jordan in 1994.

An accord with Sudan holds particular symbolic importance as Khartoum was the venue for an Arab League meeting in 1967 where members vowed not to recognise Israel, after the Arab-Israeli war three months earlier.”

However, the members of the Arab League did not only vow “not to recognise Israel” at that meeting. As Berg is surely aware, they also declared that they would not negotiate or make peace with Israel as a matter of principle:

“The Arab Heads of State have agreed to unite their political efforts at the international and diplomatic level to eliminate the effects of the aggression and to ensure the withdrawal of the aggressive Israeli forces from the Arab lands which have been occupied since the aggression of June 5. This will be done within the framework of the main principles by which the Arab States abide, namely, no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with it, and insistence on the rights of the Palestinian people in their own country.” [emphasis added]

It would of course have been useful for BBC audiences to be fully informed about the significance of the Arab League “principles” that blocked any negotiations after the Six Day War, prevented any peace agreement being signed for the following twelve years and led to Egypt being suspended from that organisation in 1979.

Berg goes on to state:

“The growing number of Arab countries formalising relations with Israel has been condemned by the Palestinians, who see it as a betrayal of their cause.

For years, Arab countries conditioned peace talks with Israel on its withdrawal from territories occupied in the 1967 war, and the establishment of a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital.”

However, the BBC’s report has not been updated to inform audiences of precisely such predictable condemnation from two Palestinian terrorist organisations and no information is given regarding the fact that the “cause” of such organisations is not a peaceful two-state solution.  

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