Trilateral talks and allocating blame for failure
On Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas arrived in New York to discuss the future of the Middle East peace process with President Obama. As the first direct meeting between the leaders and with mounting pressure to start serious peace talks, the event attracted the predictable slew of coverage.
Jonathan Freedland, writing the lead opinion piece for The Guardian on Wednesday, noted two important features of the recent stalemate. First, the current political stability of both the Israeli and Palestinian premiers: ‘local politics on both sides of the conflict has made inaction a safer bet than action.’ Second, the failure of American diplomats to secure concessions from either side, with Israel refusing to implement a total freeze on settlement building in the West Bank, and Arab states baulking at implementing ‘normalisation’ gestures.
These two important points, however, were not really addressed in most of the news-reporting. The stalemate between Netanyahu, who only offered a partial settlement freeze of nine months, and Abbas, who declined the offer of peace-talks without preconditions, was not portrayed as a stand-off between two uncompromising leaders. Rather, the coverage emphasised the inability of George Mitchell to secure a shift in Israel’s position on settlements. This emphasis was indicated in three ways.
First, three out of seven headlines explicitly blamed Israel for the failure of the talks. The Sunday Times claimed, ‘Obama stumped by Israel as all world’s problems arrive’. The Daily Telegraph asserted, ‘Middle East summit in doubt as Israel rejects settlement freeze’ and The Guardian said, ‘Settlements row throws Middle East peace talks into doubt’.
The remaining four headlines referred to the meeting without holding either party responsible. The Independent on Sunday gave a simple description of the situation, with ‘Obama calls joint talks with leaders of Israel and Palestine’. The Financial Times and The Independent highlighted the diplomatic tensions proceeding the event, with ‘Obama convenes talks to break Mideast impasse’ and ‘US plays down hopes of ending deadlock on Middle East’ respectively. The Times ambiguously stated: ‘Hopes for peace talks dashed as US envoy leaves empty-handed’, but qualified it immediately beneath in the subheading: ‘Settlements are still the main stumbling block on the road to a deal’.
The second way in which Israel was identified as the blameworthy party was in the way the Israeli and Palestinian leaders were depicted. Two info boxes gave an indication of their respective roles in the eyes of a section of the media. A table in The Independent listing issues to be discussed at the UN, depicted Netanyahu opposite the question, ‘Who are the awkward squad?’ in the ‘Middle East/Iran’ section. By contrast, an info box in The Times, described Mahmoud Abbas as ‘Bending backwards to be helpful’. The Independent editorial cartoon also left little doubt as to which of the leaders was seen as most problematic.
Third, while all of the articles tackled the subject of continued West Bank settlement policies in some detail, there was very little discussion of the rejection by Arab states to thawing relations with Israel. Only three of the seven articles (Financial Times, The Independent and The Times) mentioned that the possible Arab concessions - overflight rights, tourist visas and the like - had been rebuffed, while The Sunday Times and The Guardian described them, but did not state that they had been rejected. The Independent on Sunday and Telegraph made no mention of the Arab concession package at all, although the latter stated that ‘Mr Obama had linked Israeli concessions over settlements to American promises to “get tough” with Iran.’
25 September