An issue of Falastin newspaper in the 1930s (Photo courtesy of www.minfo.ps)By Rand Dalgamouni
AMMAN - The Palestinian press has played a crucial role in shaping a Palestinian national identity and consciousness, and the new media continues to play this role today, a researcher said Tuesday.
"In the Palestinian case, the press is more than a passive forge or mirror of a nation," Rashid Khalidi, who is Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University, said at a conference yesterday.
He noted that for a people to whom a state has been "tantalisingly out of reach", civil society institutions, notably the press, become the "propagators" of the nation, instead of the state.
"The press was much more than a mirror; in this case, the media was the message. The message was that 'this region belongs to us'," Khalidi added.
His observations were part of a paper he presented at a conference commemorating the centenary of Falastin, the longest running Palestinian newspaper.
Falastin newspaper was founded by journalist Issa Al Issa in Jaffa in 1911. Working under the censorship of the Ottoman rule and the British mandate, the paper, which developed from a weekly into a daily, was suspended from publication over 20 times.
Falastin moved to Jerusalem in 1950 after the 1948 war before closing permanently on March 21, 1967. Later in March, the newspaper was merged with another daily to form the Jordanian Ad Dustour.
Organised by the Columbia University Middle East Research Centre, the two-day conference, titled "A Hundred Years of Journalism", groups 24 local, regional and international researchers and academicians in Amman to examine the contribution of Falastin to the 20th-century Middle East.
At the conference, Khalidi argued that the new media, has managed to transcend borders and establish links between "like-minded people" from groups "inside and outside" the Palestinian territories, mobilising them to rally across borders in "what we have seen on May 15 and June 5".
The Arab studies professor was referring to the marches over the Israeli borders with Syria, Lebanon and Jordan that took place recently to mark the creation of Israel on Palestinian land, in what is known to Arabs as Nakbeh or catastrophe, and those marking the 1967 war, known as Naksa or set back.
He explained that in this function, the new media does not achieve something unprecedented, but becomes an extension of the old media.
Also during a session in yesterday's conference, Ilan Pappe, fellow and director of the European Centre for Palestine Studies at Exeter University, said a close reading of Falastin shows "how very early on, writers in the paper recognised Zionism beyond its actual reality".
He noted that for the paper "to write before 1949 that this group [of Jewish immigrants] poses existential dangers" is a sign of foresight, adding that the paper, at the same time, did not demonise the settlers, highlighting the positive aspects they may bring to Palestine.
Such writings prove wrong "anyone who says that educated Palestinians ignored the danger of Zionism", Pappe said.
He argued that the problem, however, was that the educated Palestinian elite focused on the purchase of Palestinian lands by Zionists as the main threat; "they could not decipher the main threat as being beyond a colonialist force" and more of a plan for "racial cleansing".
Pappe warned that the same view is currently being adopted towards settlements.
"The settlements are not the illness; they are a symptom of an ideology that a people must be removed."
8 June 2011
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