Censorship in the West Bank is the practice of controlling the content of what media within the West Bank were permitted to state, and what was, in various periods, denied free expression.
In the West Bank both the British Mandatory "Defense Emergency Regulations of 1945, No. 88" – stipulating that "every article, picture, advertisement, decree and death notice must be submitted to military censors", [1] – and "Israeli Military Order No. IOI (1967)", amended by "Order No. 718 (1977)" and "No. 938 (1981)" concerning "the prohibition of incitement and adverse propaganda" formed the basis for censoring West Bank publications, poetry and literary productions. The problem was that no guidelines clarified precisely what could or could not be said, and even articles translated directly from the Hebrew press could be prohibited, or love poems free of any nationalistic undertone could be suppressed from publication by a censor, [2] or theatrical pieces approved in Israel could be blocked by arbitrary fiat by any military governor, or staging denied by simply not replying to requests for permission. [3] Newspapers could lose their licenses, without any reason given, on the basis of 1945 Emergency Regulation (Article 92/2). [4] There were two distinct censorship bureaus, one run by the military and the other by the civil administration, and what was allowed by one could be overturned by the other, and this double procedure applied to galley proofs of every article in newspapers. [4] In the first decades of occupation, Palestinian publications were vetted and numerous books were censored to remove any phrase or expression which was considered as "incitement" or fostering national feelings among the Palestinians. Thus even obituaries stating that a family "in the homeland and the diaspora mourns" the deceased was struck out. [5] Coverage of Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon in Jerusalem's Arabic papers, and particularly condolence notices, were severely curtailed. The word "pride" used in an obituary for the fallen was objected to. [6] Editors were harassed and papers closed for containing articles critical of settlements. [7]
Censorship even extended to denying travel permits for notable Palestinians like Elias Freij, Major of Bethlehem, scheduled to be interviewed in the US on NBC's Meet the Press. [4] That war, according to several Israeli observers like Ze'ev Schiff, Yehoshafat Harkabi and Avner Yaniv, was itself strategically motivated as necessary to "safeguard the occupation of the West Bank." [8] [9] When Yitzhak Laor appealed to the Israeli Supreme Court about the way the censorship board censored his play – which made analogies between the military government in the territory and Nazism, the Court backed the plaintiff, leading to the board's suspension. The court's decision had no effect on the military's censorship body in the West Bank and Gaza, and plays can be closed if it is thought their content threatens Israel's security. [10] Graffiti (shi'arati) are a major medium for protesting occupation and flourished under the First Intifada. They were illegal by the fact that they were written without obtaining a permit. Julie Peteet states that "it was illegal to write for public dissemination without submission of the text to the censors". [11] Under Military Order 1260 promulgated in November 1988, Israeli military authorities could fine $350 the owner of any property on whose walls the graffiti artist had written a slogan or painted a picture. This proved to be so lucrative a source of revenue for the Israelis that the intifada authorities themselves had to prohibit the practice. [lower-alpha 1] Soldiers blacked out or scrubbed walls of graffiti, or when incised, had them chiselled off: when book-long collections of such graffiti were published, they were banned by the military censor. [12] Even works unrelated to the conflict have been banned in the occupied territories, as was Hamlet. [13] Fathi Ghabin received a 6-month gaol sentence for using the PLO colours – red, black, green, and white – in one of his paintings. [14]
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The Palestinian National Authority also uses censorship. As early as 1996 it forbade circulation of Edward Said's Peace and Its Discontents. [15]
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Ramallah is a Palestinian city in the central West Bank or Ramallah Bank, that serves as the de facto administrative capital of the State of Palestine. It is situated on the Judaean Mountains, 10 km north of Jerusalem, at an average elevation of 872 meters (2,861 ft) above sea level, adjacent to al-Bireh.
The First Intifada, also known as the First Palestinian Intifada or the Stone Intifada, was a sustained series of protests, civil disobedience and riots carried out by Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories and Israel. It was motivated by collective Palestinian frustration over Israel's military occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, as it approached a twenty-year mark, having begun in the wake of the 1967 Arab–Israeli War. The uprising lasted from December 1987 until the Madrid Conference of 1991, though some date its conclusion to 1993, with the signing of the Oslo Accords.
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The Oslo Accords are a pair of interim agreements between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO): the Oslo I Accord, signed in Washington, D.C., in 1993; and the Oslo II Accord, signed in Taba, Egypt, in 1995. They marked the start of the Oslo process, a peace process aimed at achieving a peace treaty based on Resolution 242 and Resolution 338 of the United Nations Security Council. The Oslo process began after secret negotiations in Oslo, Norway, resulting in both the recognition of Israel by the PLO and the recognition by Israel of the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people and as a partner in bilateral negotiations.
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Lisa Taraki is an Afghan-born Palestinian journalist, teacher and sociologist. She is an associate professor of sociology at Birzeit University in the West Bank and former Dean of its graduate students. She is the co-founder of the university's Institute of Women's Studies and founding Director of the doctoral program in social sciences. Taraki is also the co-founder of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), a campaign that spearheaded the BDS movement and advocates for academic and cultural boycotts of Israel until it stops what they see as violations of the Palestinians' human rights. She has also served as the director of the board of trustees for Al Haq.
The Israeli Military Governorate was a military governance system established following the Six-Day War in June 1967, in order to govern the civilian population of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, the Sinai Peninsula and the western part of Golan Heights. The governance was based on the Fourth Geneva Convention, which provides guidelines for military rule in occupied areas. East Jerusalem was the only exception from this order, and it was added to Jerusalem municipal area as early as 1967, and extending Israeli law to the area effectively annexing it in 1980. During this period, the UN and many sources referred to the military governed areas as Occupied Arab Territories.
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The West Bank, including East Jerusalem, has been under military occupation by Israel since 7 June 1967, when Israeli forces captured the territory, then ruled by Jordan, during the Six-Day War. The status of the West Bank as a militarily occupied territory has been affirmed by the International Court of Justice and, with the exception of East Jerusalem, by the Israeli Supreme Court. The official view of the Israeli government is that the laws of belligerent occupation do not apply to the territories, which it considers instead "disputed", and it administers the West Bank, excepting East Jerusalem, under the Israeli Civil Administration, a branch of the Israeli Ministry of Defense. Considered to be a classic example of an "intractable conflict", the length of Israel's occupation was already regarded as exceptional after two decades, and is now the longest in modern history. Israel has cited several reasons for retaining the West Bank within its ambit: a claim based on the notion of historic rights to this as a homeland as claimed in the Balfour Declaration of 1917; security grounds, both internal and external; and the deep symbolic value for Jews of the area occupied.
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