BBC’s Knell fails to tell all about the PA’s ‘dire straits’

On the morning of February 21^st the BBC News website published a long report by the BBC Jerusalem bureau’s Yolande Knell headlined “Palestinian Authority in dire straits as Israel’s hold on West Bank deepens”.

Knell – described in the by-line as reporting from Ramallah – tells BBC audiences that:

“Sitting among green rolling hills, studded with olive groves, most homes in al-Mughayir are in an area where Israel’s military controls security, but the internationally backed Palestinian Authority (PA) should provide basic services. Increasingly though, it cannot – it is mired in a deep economic crisis.

“When I go to them, they can’t give me the support I need,” Abu Naim says. “The Authority has no money!””

Nine days before the appearance of Knell’s report, the PA’s finance minister had held a press conference in Ramallah during which he blamed the PA’s inability to provide essential public services on Israel’s withholding of tax revenues. The next paragraph in Knell’s report uses that same framing:

“After the deadly 7 October Hamas-led attacks on Israel, some 100,000 Palestinians lost permits to work in Israel. On top of that, Israel is withholding tax transfers that it collects for the PA because of an ongoing dispute about Palestinian school texts and stipends to the families of those jailed or killed by Israel, including attackers.”

In July 2025 the Times of Israel reported that:

“Before the war, roughly 100,000 West Bank Palestinians worked inside Israel, and another 40,000 were employed in Israeli settlements and Israeli-controlled industrial zones in the West Bank.

Today, that number has shrunk to just 11 percent of what it was before October 7. In Israel, only around 7,000 Palestinians are allowed to enter each month, all classified as essential workers in sectors such as hospitality or food manufacturing. Another 9,000 work in settlements or nearby industrial zones.”

Knell has nothing more to tell her readers about that “ongoing dispute about Palestinian school texts”. She fails to explain that it exists because, as was reported in November of last year:

“Palestinian Authority textbooks continue to glorify terror, demonize Israelis, traffic in antisemitic themes and advance exclusivist nationalist rhetoric despite promises to implement reforms, a comprehensive study of the authority’s teaching materials has found.”

Neither does Knell clarify that the “dispute” involves the European Union:

“The key commitment on educational reform was made in July 2024, when the Palestinian Authority signed a “Letter of Intent” with the EU’s European Commission pledging to reform its curriculum.

The 2024 Letter of Intent, in which the PA committed to changing the curriculum, served as the basis for the transfer of over €400 million ($462 million) from the European Union to the PA between July and September 2024 — conditioned on meeting education-related reform benchmarks. This followed previous years in which the EU froze funding over incitement concerns.

However, that September, Abdul Hakim Abu Jamous, head of the Humanities Division in the Palestinian Ministry of Education, told the Palestinian newspaper Al-Quds: “Not a single word has been removed or changed in the textbooks.””

Neither does Knell bother to explain her reference to “stipends to the families of those jailed or killed by Israel, including attackers”. As we have documented in the past, that topic has been under-reported by the BBC for years, including by Knell herself.

In February 2025, in response to pressure from Western countries, the PA claimed to have reformed the system of payments to Palestinian prisoners and the families of terrorists. However, the old system has in fact continued under different channels. PMW estimates that “at least 23,500 terrorists received hidden Pay-for-Slay payments in 2025, amounting to $315 million” and at the press conference held in Ramallah just over a week before the appearance of Knell’s report, the PA’s finance minister declared that: [emphasis added]

“We are going to pay part of the salaries, at a rate of 60% and a minimum of 2,000 [Israeli] shekels (just under $650 -Ed.) – next Monday, [Feb. 16, 2026], before the start of the [Muslim fasting] month of Ramadan… With effort and great, almost impossible difficulty, we continue to provide this [60%] rate of [PA public employee] salaries. We have not abandoned any Palestinian resident, whether they are prisoners or families of Martyrs and wounded (i.e., terrorists).”

Knell makes no mention of that part of the story even as she goes on to report the 60% figure:

“The PA says it is now owed more than $4bn (£3bn; 3.4bn euros). It has been paying most public sector workers – including doctors, police officers and teachers – just 60% of their salaries. Its schools – where more than 600,000 children study – open just three days a week.”

Those significant omissions in Knell’s reporting are all the more relevant in light of a statement that appears later in her report: [emphasis added]

“Unlike Israel, the PA does not sit on the US-led Board of Peace. However, it is expected to oversee some 5,000 police officers in Gaza. President Trump’s peace plan also foresees the PA eventually taking control of the territory after completing an unspecified “reform programme,” and nods to a future when “the conditions may finally be in place for a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood.””

Contrary to Knell’s suggestion, the terms of that reform programme are not unspecified. They include political accountability in the form of elections and the tackling of corruption, as well as reforms to deal with incitement in the education system and the prisoner payments programme.

Yolande Knell dedicates most of her 1,206-word report to blaming Israel for the Palestinian Authority’s financial “dire straits” and, as is all too often the case in BBC reporting, the PA is stripped of all agency and responsibility for its own situation.

It is hence hardly surprising to find that Knell chose not to fully inform her readers about the EU funding that was frozen because of the PA’s failure – or refusal – to deal with the issue of incitement in school textbooks or the withholding of tax revenues in accordance with an Israeli law passed in 2018 because of the PA’s continued payments to convicted terrorists.

The BBC’s public purposes oblige it to provide audiences with “a range and depth of analysis” in order to facilitate their understanding of “global issues” as “informed citizens”. When BBC journalists withhold relevant information and context in order to frame a story in a particular manner, that public purpose clearly cannot be met.

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