On May 2nd UNRWA’s Amman office put out a “Statement by UNRWA Commissioner-General, Mr Philippe Lazzarini, on Israeli Security Forces demolition orders issued on 1 May” which was then amplified by that organisation on social media.
Coincidentally or not, bright and early on the morning of May 3rd a report relating to the topic of that UNRWA PR campaign appeared on the BBC News website’s ‘Middle East’ page.
Titled “‘I saved my ID card and my dog’: Israel expands demolitions of West Bank refugee homes” and credited to Emir Nader and Alaa Daraghmeh of BBC Arabic (with “[a]dditional reporting by Lina Shaikhouni and Daniele Palumbo” of BBC Verify), the report tells readers that:
“The UN’s Palestinian refugee agency Unrwa says its best estimate is that Israel has razed at least 260 buildings containing around 800 apartments during “Operation Iron Wall”, focusing on three refugee camps in the north of the West Bank: Jenin, Tulkarem and Nur Shams. Unrwa estimates that 42,000 Palestinians have been displaced from the camps since January. […]
On 1 May, Israel gave Palestinian officials in the West Bank a new map of 106 buildings it said it would demolish in Tulkarem and Nur Shams refugee camps in the next 24 hours for “military purposes”. It said residents could apply for a brief window to return home to retrieve essential belongings.
Aid agencies say that Israel’s campaign has caused the largest forced displacement of Palestinians in the West Bank in decades.
“What’s happening is unprecedented,” says Roland Friedrich, Unrwa’s West Bank director.
“In terms of the number of displaced people and the level of destruction, we’ve never seen anything like it since 1967,” he added, referring to the year Israel began its military occupation of the West Bank. […]
Israel’s blockade of West Bank refugee camps has made establishing information about what is happening inside nearly impossible, says Unrwa’s Roland Friedrich, including the exact extent of demolitions.”
Notably, at no point in this long report are readers told why refugee camps receiving UNRWA services still exist in areas which have been under Palestinian Authority control for the past twenty-seven (Nur Shams) and thirty (Jenin, Tulkarem) years and, as is usually the case in BBC reporting, readers are not told that Jordanian attacks in 1967 led to that “military occupation of the West Bank”.
No less remarkable is the failure to provide readers with the full context to the story which is the basis for their report. Nader and Daraghmeh tell their readers that:
“Before the outbreak of the war in Gaza in October 2023, Israel was already engaged in a military campaign against armed groups in the West Bank.
A number of groups emerged in the densely-populated urban refugee camps created for Palestinians who fled or were expelled from their homes during the war that followed the creation of the state of Israel in 1948.”
Israeli forces were indeed already operating against terrorism in Palestinian Authority controlled areas prior to October 2023, with the reason for that being the rise in terrorist activity which began in mid-2021, with support from Iran and its proxies Hamas and Hizballah.
The BBC, however, has repeatedly failed to provide its audiences with the full range of information necessary for understanding of that rise in terror and Israel’s subsequent counter-terrorism operations. Additionally, the corporation has repeatedly downplayed or ignored the Palestinian Authority’s loss of control over parts of Area A where it is responsible for security.
Significantly, the word terror appears only once in this entire 1179-word article and even that is in the form of a quote from an Israeli minister:
“Israel’s defence minister has called the camps “nests of terror” and in January stepped up its campaign against the armed groups operating inside them – entering and blockading a number of refugee camps in the northern West Bank that are home to tens of thousands of Palestinians.”
Nader and Daraghmeh go on to tell their readers that:
“The main groups in Jenin camp are affiliated to Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas. Their fighters have mostly attacked Israeli military forces, alongside sporadic attacks on Israeli settlers in the West Bank.
The number of fighters is unknown but local journalists estimate that there were around 150 fighters in Jenin camp prior to the recent operations by both Israel and the Palestinian Authority.”
In July 2023 Ynet reported the following:
“The dominant terrorist group in Jenin is the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, dating back to the days of the Second Intifada. About a quarter of the city’s population and its refugee camp are affiliated with the organization. The leaders of the organization in the Gaza Strip constantly work to provide funding, training and combat resources to the Jihad cells in Jenin, while Hamas also operates to strengthen its infrastructure in the city. According to the IDF, approximately 20% of Jenin’s residents identify themselves with Hamas, which controls Gaza.
However, new armed groups have emerged within the refugee camp itself, some of which are not affiliated organizationally with either Hamas or Islamic Jihad. They have banded under various banners, such as the Jenin Brigade, and have received significant protection and popularity among the Palestinian population in the northern West Bank, thanks to videos circulated on TikTok in which operatives film themselves engaging in long-range shootings at settlements or soldiers, and launching homemade rockets.”
The BBC’s report continues:
“The Palestinian Authority, which governs parts of the West Bank, launched its own crackdown in Jenin camp in December 2024 and its forces only withdrew when the Israeli military began its major operation there in January.”
Notably, journalists at the BBC News website ignored that PA “crackdown” for weeks.
Clearly BBC audiences cannot fully understand a report promoting a story about a Jenin resident whose house was allegedly demolished for reasons that are not adequately clarified, the broader topic of what are presented as “demolitions of West Bank refugee homes” or the related UNRWA PR campaign, if they are not provided with the full context behind the story, including on the obviously relevant topic of Palestinian terrorism.
As is all too often the case, however, the BBC once again demonstrates with this report that it considers context and historical background an ‘optional extra’.
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