The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict in the British Press Ruth Sanz Sabido The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict in the British Press Ruth Sanz Sabido The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict in the British Press Ruth Sanz Sabido Canterbury Christ Church University Canterbury, UK ISBN 978-1-137-52645-8 ISBN 978-1-137-52646-5 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-52646-5 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2019 The author(s) has/have asserted their right(s) to be identified as the author(s) of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. This work is subject to copyright. 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An earlier version of some sections in Chapters 1, 4, 7 and 8 was pub- lished in: Sabido, R. (2015) ‘Palestine in the British press: A Postcolonial Critical Discourse Analysis’. Journal of Arab & Muslim Media Research, 8(3): 199–216, doi: 10.1386/jammr.8.3.199_1. vii c ontents 1 Introduction: The Promised Land and a Land of Promises 1 2 Postcolonial Critical Discourse Analysis: Theory and Method 19 3 Contextualising the Conflict: A Brief History of the Land 55 4 Contextualising the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict in the News 79 5 Situating Political Violence: ‘Terrorism’ and Discourse 101 6 ‘Terrorism’ and the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict in the News 121 7 Identity, Conflict and Visibility 155 8 Conclusions 181 Index 193 ix l t ist of Ables Table 2.1 Distribution of sampled articles per year and publication 48 Table 6.1 Frequency of the term ‘Terrorism’ per publication in all historical samples 122 Table 6.2 Frequency of the term ‘Terrorist’ per publication in all historical samples 123 Table 6.3 Frequency of the terms ‘Terrorism’ and ‘Terrorist’ in 1948 124 Table 6.4 Sources using the term ‘Terrorism’ and ‘Terrorist’ in 1948 127 Table 6.5 Frequency of the terms ‘Terrorism’ and ‘Terrorist’ in 1967 130 Table 6.6 Sources using the term ‘Terrorism’ and ‘Terrorist’ in 1967 132 Table 6.7 Frequency of the terms ‘Terrorism’ and ‘Terrorist’ in 1987 135 Table 6.8 Sources using the term ‘Terrorism’ and ‘Terrorist’ in 1987 136 Table 6.9 Frequency of the terms ‘Terrorism’ and ‘Terrorist’ in 2008 141 Table 6.10 Sources using the term ‘Terrorism’ and ‘Terrorist’ in 2008 143 Table 6.11 Frequency of the terms ‘Terrorism’ and ‘Terrorist’ in 2018 147 Table 6.12 Sources using the term ‘Terrorism’ and ‘Terrorist’ in 2018 148 Table 7.1 Mentions of different agents and entities in 1948 159 Table 7.2 Mentions of different agents and entities in 1967 162 Table 7.3 Mentions of different agents and entities in 1987 168 Table 7.4 Mentions of different agents and entities in 2008 171 Table 7.5 Mentions of different agents and entities in 2018 175 xi CHAPTER 1 Introduction: The Promised Land and a Land of Promises The Israeli–Palestinian conflict, 70 years after the creation of the state of Israel, continues to create an international impact and gain widespread media attention. This conflict has raised numerous discussions regard- ing the exact nature of the problem, “whether it is a clash of religions or races, or a territorial dispute involving historical claims to the land” (Devore 1976: xxii). Since the early days of the conflict, the struggles between Palestinians and Israelis have indeed been about territoriality, identity, ethnicity, religion, economics, competing nationalisms, coloni- alism and imperialism (Milton-Edwards and Hinchcliffe 2008: 22). This is, in effect, a deeply multifaceted conflict that has been complicated by a wide range of factors. It follows, therefore, that the conflict may also be subjected to a multifaceted form of analysis. All the aspects mentioned above, along with others, have played some part in the development of the conflict. One key historical develop- ment in the history of these clashes was the establishment of the British Mandate of Palestine in 1923—a form of colonial administration that lasted until 14 May 1948, when the Zionist state was created (El-Eini 2004; Robson 2011). According to Home (2003: 293), the boundaries that are often established between the coloniser and the colonised were applied in Palestine during the Mandate, following the Lugardian ideology of British colonialism between the two World Wars. In his anal- ysis of Lord Frederick Lugard’s The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa ([1922] 1965), Bello (2017) points out that the dual mandate of the British Empire aimed to open Africa to the civilised world and the © The Author(s) 2019 1 R. Sanz Sabido, The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict in the British Press, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-52646-5_1 2 R. SANZ SABIDO African mind to civilisation. This approach was applied through the cre- ation of two social roles: the one of the civiliser and the one that needs to be civilised. This binary translated into discursive strategies that natu- ralised the infantilisation and fetishisation of the native populations. But of course, this process was not only conducted through language, nor was it only applied in Africa. Referring to Palestine, Home (2003) argues that the British Mandate modified complex land laws and regulations inherited from the Ottoman land code, and these were later passed to the successor Israeli state, eventually becoming “the tools for ethnocratic control, through which Israel came to claim public ownership over virtu- ally all its physical territory”. Similarly, Robson (2011: 2) points out how the British colonial administration made the decision to promote com- munally organised legal and political structures following the example of imperial policy in India and elsewhere. Proceeding from a strict definition of the postcolonial as “what comes after colonialism” (Young 2001), 1948 would be considered by some postcolonial scholars as the temporal marker of postcoloniality between Britain and Palestine, because it was at that point when Palestinian lands would no longer be ruled or administered by Britain. From this perspective, the end of the British Mandate meant that the colonial era had come to an end and a postcolonial period had begun. Even though this is by no means the only factor that has shaped the development of the conflict, it is worth paying attention to this historical fact, as the Mandate ineluctably steered the fate of the Land and its people. When it comes to media representations of acts and agents of political vio- lence within the conflict, the extent to which (post)colonial history and responsibilities are visible in contemporary discourses sheds light on the connections between discourse and power, and helps to identify which aspects of the conflict have been erased. This is what this book does: focusing specifically on the postcolonial relationship between Britain and Palestine, it examines the representa- tions of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict in the British press, starting from the premise that media representations in Britain should be analysed in relation to Britain’s role as a postcolonial power. In this respect, Brunt and Cere (2011: 3) have argued that Britain’s role as the colonial ‘cen- tre’ is strongly intertwined with British contemporary media cultures, and thus these media cultures should be explored through the lens of postcolonial theory. Drawing upon a variety of discursive material, Said (1978) had previously stated that in non-totalitarian societies, certain