Report from Ramallah - Part 1

Upfront editor Emily McNeill is in the West Bank for the summer, studying Arabic at Birzeit University and learning about life in Palestine under occupation. Whenever possible she'll be blogging for Buzzsaw about her experiences there. Questions or comments? Post them here or email her directly at emilymcneill@gmail.com.

From what I can tell, today is the calmest since I’ve been in Ramallah. I did some errands around the city this afternoon, and the streets were full of people who seemed to be going about their business as usual. Thursday night and yesterday the streets were quiet, and people I’ve talked to say the atmosphere was unusually tense.

The media, though, seem to have come to the opposite conclusion, and in some ways they’re certainly right. The political situation remains very unstable and today Fatah fighters made their most visible move against Hamas in Ramallah and Nablus. But some of the coverage – particularly the images – suggests a very different environment than what I see around me. Not surprisingly the media is captivated by images of men wearing masks and carrying machine guns.

I was buying some juice in Al-Manara (the central circle in Ramallah where a lot of demonstrations take place) when a lot of these masked gunmen were gathered there. Mostly they were just milling around holding their weapons while crowds of people either walked by them around the circle or stood watching. Cameramen were set up around the circle following fighters around and sticking cameras in their faces. It was a ridiculous scene, and it reminded me of the little I’ve read about Walter Lippman. I looked him up on Wikipedia when I got home and found this quote: “The function of news is to signalize an event, the function of truth is to bring to light the hidden facts, to set them in relation with each other, and make a picture of reality on which men can act.”

The images these journalists were collecting in Al Manara “signalize” the event of the day – Fatah’s moves against Hamas in Ramallah. They illustrate perfectly a sense of tension, unrest and violence and are the ideal images to accompany tonight’s reports on the turmoil in the Palestinian government. But while that turmoil is real, these images are caricatures. Take a step back and the men in these images are a small – though unsettling – piece of a much larger picture. Ramallah, a city of 40,000 people, is going about its business today while gunmen show off for TV.

I’m not arguing that the images of gunmen are irrelevant. These men are on the streets of Ramallah, and the fact that they’re flexing their muscles and harassing Hamas is significant. But the obvious question is whether the coverage encourages a real understanding of the situation in the West Bank today, and if not, what factors does it ignore and what stereotypes does it reinforce? Even if we could agree on the answers to those questions, how could journalists go about producing material that was further from "news" and closer to "truth?"

It's complicated. But, like so many people have said before, I find myself wishing today that it wasn't just the pictures with shock value and the people perceived to have power that were making it onto the front pages.