Global Journalist

Treading the line or toeing it?

By Jay Bushinsky Posted Apr 1 2005

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Few of the world’s newspapers might take pride in having a former jailbird as their news editor, but in the case of the Palestinian daily, Al-Quds (Jerusalem), reputedly the only independent daily in the West Bank and the Arab sector of Jerusalem, Maher Al-Alami’s appointment corroborates the newspaper’s journalistic reputation. Al-Alami, who fills the beautifully laid-out pages of Al-Quds with local, national and international news and deploys 30 reporters in his volatile circulation area, spent two stints behind bars for making editorial decisions that displeased the Palestinian Authority’s late chairman, Yasser Arafat.

Today, Al-Quds operates out of a modern and spacious building in Atarot, an outlying Jerusalem suburb that contains a large industrial zone as well as Jewish and Arab inhabitants. The staff covers its areas of circulation: the West Bank, Gaza Strip and the Arab sector of Jerusalem, as well as neighboring Israel. But the newspaper has a long and troubled history with the Palestinian Authority.

A decade ago, Al-Alami was summoned by the Ra’is (chief or president as Arafat was called in Arabic) for choosing not to publish a story about a meeting with the Greek Orthodox Patriarch Theodorus on page one and placing it on an inside page.Al-Alami was jailed for a week. Five years later, when Al-Alami was working as a freelancer, he was arrested for spreading incitement against the PA. He had written an article about corruption at the PA’s highest level. It appeared in Al-Istaqbal (The Future) among other publications and earned him five days behind bars.

Despite Al-Alami’s purported fall from grace, Mahmoud Abu-Zuluf, the owner, publisher and editor in chief of Al-Quds, reappointed him news editor in 2003.Abu-Zuluf was trained at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism and returned to Jerusalem from New York imbued with the American credo that the press must be free.

His first step was to establish his own newspaper under the logo Al-Jihad (The Struggle). This occurred several years before the Six-Day War when the West Bank and most of Jerusalem’s Arabic-speaking sectors were under Jordanian rule. One of Jordan’s prime ministers decided that Al-Jihad should be merged with two of its rivals, A-Destour (The Constitution) and Falastin (Palestine), presumably in the belief that it would be easier to keep one newspaper under the Hashemite monarchy’s control than three. That arrangement was not destined for media longevity, however.Israeli troops seized Jerusalem’s Old City and the adjacent Arab districts on June 7, 1967, and the city’s Arabic-language press was brought to a standstill.

Despite the sudden and unforeseen change in political circumstances, Abu-Zuluf was determined to continue providing the Arab public with a newspaper in its own language and if necessary, a totally new one.He approached Teddy Kollek, the city’s Israeli mayor, and emerged with a loan generous enough to start the presses rolling again.The ultimate outcome was Al-Quds, ostensibly a politically independent broadsheet whose editorial side was pro-Jordanian (its West Bank subjects made up the local readership) and whose business side was commercially viable. The fact that copy had to be submitted to Israel’s military press censorship before it could be published did not upset Abu-Zuluf.This was a nuisance but a familiar one.

“Under the Jordanians, the censors used to sit in the city room of every newspaper,” says Jamil Hamad, former editor of rival daily, Al-Fajr (The Dawn). Then, like now, Al-Quds’ average (daily and Friday) circulation was 30,000. Al-Fajr, which ceased publication nearly two decades ago, had slightly less.“The main difference between us was that we promoted the concept of a distinct Palestinian identity while Al-Quds adhered to its Jordanian orientation,” Hamad says.

By the time the late Yasser Arafat arrived 11 years ago as head of the then-new Palestinian Authority, three Arabic-language newspapers were published in Jerusalem: Al-Quds, A-Shaab (The People), and An-Nahar. Of the three, only Al-Quds has survived.A-Shaab, which pursued a pro-PLO editorial policy, had a miniscule circulation and closed down.An-Nahar (The Daylight), which was founded by Othman Halak, a prosperous local businessman who advocated moderation and conciliation in the ongoing dispute with Israel, was told by Arafat that he had to change his newspaper’s political line and make it conform to that of the Palestine Liberation Organization. Halak preferred to cease publication.

“An-Nahar really was independent,” says Yigal Carmon, president of the Washington-based Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).“Halak asked Arafat for a license and to be allowed to publish without political interference.Arafat’s response was to close down his newspaper.”

Today’s Palestinian newspaper scene, which is closely monitored by the MEMRI, consists of three newspapers: Al-Ayyam (The Days), all of whose employees draw salaries from the PA, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida (The New Life), which is owned and operated by the PLO, and Al-Quds. Carmon credited the latter with being “relatively more independent” than the other two but contended that the PA has assigned polytruks to each of them.“Ostensibly, they work for their respective newspapers, but their real job is to report to their handlers at the Palestinian Authority’s headquarters in Ramallah.”

Arafat’s formula for the Palestinian media was for them to not publish “unpleasant stories” and refrain from criticism of the PLO.Carmon described Al-Quds as a business that publishes rumors and paid advertisements as news. He categorically rejected the notion that it really is editorially independent and courageous.

His attitude reflected the consensus among senior Palestinian journalists that every newspaper is on the PA’s or the PLO’s payroll. One of them contended that every editor either received direct payoffs from the PA or PLO or were hired by Arafat as “political” or “media” advisers.

Well-informed Palestinians took this practice in stride if only because their journalists and editors used to be paid by the Jordanians to toe the Hashemite line. Another said this system “has not changed one iota” since the advent of Mahmoud Abbas as Arafat’s successor.The electronic media emanating from the West Bank and Gaza Strip (radio and TV) are still owned, operated and controlled by the PLO and the PA. The same is true of WAFA, the Palestinian news agency.

Al-Quds managed to cope with Arafat’s dictates and Abu-Zuluf never lost sight of the newspaper’s primary function as an independent business. According to Atallah Mansour, a veteran Israeli-Arab journalist whose weekly column appears on its pages, “Al-Quds is liberal enough to let people express their respective points of view.” On the other hand, Mansour could not credit Abu-Zuluf with the same ability to resist official pressure as that demonstrated by his former employer, the late Gershon Schocken, publisher of the Hebrew daily, Ha’aretz. “Abu-Zuluf would do exactly what he was told to do or not to do by the government,” Mansour says.

“The purpose of the payoffs is to make sure the Palestinian editors will obey the PA’s orders as to what may or may not be published,” Al-Alami says.“Our newspaper was not allowed to appear in the Gaza Strip when one of our staffers was kidnapped and beaten there.”

Al-Alami spoke of the media control exercised during the recent election campaign of Mahmoud Abbas, the winner: “Abbas’ campaign propaganda appeared verbatim in Al-Quds and all the other newspapers. The only difference now is that unlike Arafat, Abu-Mazen (Abbas’ Arabic nickname) does not insist that his photograph appear every day on page one.Arafat used to send us a dozen photos a day.We used to take one of them and run it.If it related to an important event, like the visit of a foreign minister, it would make page one; if he appeared with Christian clerics or peace activists, page three. At the same time, if Arafat merely had sent a diplomatic telegram to Senegal he expected this to be reported on page one. And of course, we were forced to publish the texts of all of his speeches.”

“Abu-Zuluf (the elder) likes us to use Associated Press copy,” Al-Alami says, “because he regards it as exceptionally accurate and objective. He also prefers AP photos because we are the only Arabic-language newspaper that gets them.Otherwise, we pick up stories from Agence France-Presse, which has excellent coverage of the Arab world, including the West Bank and Gaza Strip.”Al-Alami’s computer is another major source of news material. He scans the Internet constantly, looking for additional and often unique information.“And of course, we follow the Israeli press and electronic media, radio and television constantly,” he says.

The result is overwhelming dominance of agency copy on the news pages of Al-Quds compared to minimal emphasis on original reporting by its 30 reporters in the field. Its own journalists usually do not get prominent bylines but only agate type acknowledgement at the bottom of their stories. The newspaper has a bureau in Amman, Jordan, and a correspondent there as well as its own correspondents in Washington, D.C., and Berlin.

Its shortcomings evoked blunt criticism from Nabil Feidy, a local businessman, who reads it mainly to find out who was just married, who died and who returned from the hajj pilgrimage to Mecca.

“There’s nothing to that newspaper,” he says. “No depth and no analysis.” He contended that Al-Quds lacks editorial comment and original political thinking. “I believe that the Palestinians, more than any other people, must have freedom of expression,” he said.“We live alongside Israel; we know that Israel is free.We cannot live under a totalitarian regime.”