To the Editor:

I agree with Menahem Milson [“How Not to Occupy the West Bank,” April] that nonintervention has been one of the principles of Israeli administration of day-today life on the West Bank, although I am not sure it has been “the guiding principle,” as he claims. The main problem with his article lies not in his treatment of the theoretical underpinnings of the occupation but rather in the way he slides between the theory and the reality as if they were nearly the same. Mr. Milson can do so only by ignoring the degree to which the doctrine of nonintervention has been pushed aside in practice by competing considerations.

It is hardly surprising that a policy of nonintervention would face severe constraints, given the tension and security problems that exist on the West Bank. The causes of the latter are many, but among the ones that Mr. Milson ignores are Israeli actions that would seem to complicate a commitment to nonintervention, such as settling 52,000 Israelis (through 1985) amidst a hostile population, gaining ownership or control of a large portion of the land mass of the West Bank, and acting to limit economic competition with the Jewish state.

Among other examples, Mr. Milson dwells on Israeli policy toward the Jerusalem-based Palestinian press as an illustration of nonintervention at work. Sadly, the true lesson to be learned from this example is quite different. Once the half-truths that the author has strung together on this subject are corrected, one finds a case study of the way that nonintervention is sacrificed to other objectives.

Mr. Milson would have been correct to cite as evidence of nonintervention the fact that Israel permits the Palestinian press to be among the freest in the Middle East, despite its unabashed partisanship, hostility to Israeli policies, and support of organizations committed to acts of violence against the Jewish state. But the author is not interested in making such modest claims. Instead, he suggests that nonintervention is the predominant reality for the Palestinian press, and that authorities make their presence felt only in extreme circumstances.

Mr. Milson begins by claiming that press censorship “is restricted only to military and security matters.” Although this has recently become the case for a small minority of Palestinian newspapers, most Palestinian media are required by law to submit for prior censorship their entire proposed contents, including editorials, social announcements, sports, and advertisements. While noncompliance is frequent and usually provokes nothing more than routine reprimands from the censor, it has also led to temporary closures and suspension of licenses to distribute. No written guidelines exist to explain what is taboo.

Mr. Milson follows with an assertion that is no less misleading. He says the tenor of the Arab papers is openly pro-PLO, and that Israel does not look into the sources of the papers’ financial support. While it is true that the government has not made an issue of who funds the two dailies that are openly pro-PLO, it has padlocked less prominent publications it accused of being controlled by other organizations. As Col. Joel Singer, head of the International Law Branch of the Military Advocate General’s office, told a delegation from the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) in 1984, when Israel finds out that a newspaper is owned or bought by a banned organization, the military authorities will ask for that paper’s license to be withdrawn. Last October, the weekly al-Darb was shut permanently on the ground that it was controlled by the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Several other Jerusalem-based publications have been deprived of most of their potential audience because they are banned from distribution in the occupied territories.

Mr. Milson’s next sophism is revealing. “Only overt and direct incitement to violence is prohibited,” he claims, but “sometimes editors get around this.” How? By announcing upcoming strikes, he says. Let us pass over the fact that such news items are normally banned, as Chief Censor Col. Avi Gur-Ari told the Committee to Protect Journalists in March 1986—although they occasionally do reach print. The more disturbing issue here is what is revealed by Mr. Milson’s illustration of editorial wiliness. That he considers reportage on an upcoming strike to be “overt and direct incitement to violence” suggests the way that this standard has been interpreted to include a range of material whose incitement to violence, if arguable, is anything but “overt and direct.” In the name of maintaining security, Israel bans the Palestinian press from printing a large number of news items, phrases, photographs, and symbols. This includes many—but not all—factual reports of incidents and arrests on the West Bank, of comments by Europeans and others in support of Palestinian rights, and the statements and activities of PLO leaders abroad (and not only when they advocate resistance to Israel). Certain phrases, such as “Jewish gangs” and [Israeli] “colonialism” are ordinarily banned, as Col. Gur-Ari told the IFJ in 1984.

It would of course be foolish to ignore that words and images can excite, and that well-attended strikes pose a greater security risk than small ones. Certainly, the publication of an accurate story about an Israeli settler shooting a 12-year-old Arab boy does not make it easier to preserve the peace on the West Bank. Nor does, in the frequent judgment of the censor, publication of a denial by a Palestinian that he belongs to the village leagues, or of a wire-service report that the Austrian foreign minister has condemned “Israeli expansionism.” My only point here is that the censors use their broad discretionary powers to prohibit far more news material than “overt and direct incitements] to violence.” In doing so, they most definitely impinge upon the political culture of the Palestinians, which, according to Mr. Milson, “nonintervention was designed to leave untouched.”

As I have tried to suggest by appraising the very mixed picture of Palestinian press freedom, there is a story to be told about the doctrine of nonintervention. The story is about a principle that regularly succumbs to other priorities. Instead of deriding nonintervention as the failed “path of least resistance” for Israeli policy-makers, Mr. Milson would do better to confront the realities of the occupation and ask how much that prinple ever prevailed in practice.

Eric Goldstein
New York City

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Menahem Milson writes:

My critique of the policy of the Israeli Military Government (IMG) in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip seems to have displeased Eric Goldstein exceedingly and made him very angry. In his letter he resorts to the notorious tactic of misrepresenting the arguments he wishes to attack. I shall therefore begin by restating the points in my article which he has misrepresented.

The introductory paragraph of my article makes it very clear that the article was devoted to examining one aspect of the many-faceted problem of the occupied territories, i.e., “the principles which have guided the IMG in administering the day-to-day life of the Arab population of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. . . .” I especially focused on the principle which has been seen as the most distinctive feature of that policy and which has been termed by the policy’s architects “nonintervention.”

I emphasized that nonintervention in the context of the IMG policy “never did and still does not mean the absence of government involvement from all spheres of life.” I explained that “nonintervention” in that context has a far more limited meaning. The architects of the IMG policy simply decided to refrain from any attempt to interfere with the political culture of the Palestinians, despite the fact that the most glaring aspect of that culture has so far been the expression of hatred for Israel.

In demonstrating how this principle of nonintervention has operated in reality, I shall once more cite some of the examples I offered in my article:

First, the Jordanian texts which are replete with hostility to Israel and the Jewish people are still the basis of the curricula of West Bank schools.

Second, PLO funding of pro-PLO activities and institutions has continued without interference. This reality is unequivocally confirmed by Yasir Arafat and Dr. Fu’ad Bisisu, Secretary of the Joint PLO-Jordan Committee, in statements which are quoted in my article but ignored by Mr. Goldstein. Beneficiaries of PLO funding include: all of the West Bank newspapers except for one weekly which was established four months ago with Jordanian funds; the pro-PLO research center in Jerusalem; a news agency and information service; a network of trade-unions which are centers of pro-PLO political mobilization and rarely deal with labor problems. (That “political mobilization” sometimes extends to actual terrorist actions was demonstrated a few months ago when the chairman of the construction-workers union in the West Bank village of Deek was blown up by a bomb he was preparing to plant in Israel.)

Third, four dailies and four weeklies (not just two dailies, as Mr. Goldstein says) sustained by PLO funds are published in Jerusalem under Israeli license. The example given by Mr. Goldstein of the closure of the DFLP-controlled al-Darb weekly last year proves only that Israeli bureaucrats, like all others, are not always consistent. When Mr. Goldstein asserts that “most Palestinian media are required by law to submit for prior censorship their entire proposed contents,” he is guilty of the saine failure to separate theory from reality of which he accuses me.

In fact, the Palestinian media rarely do submit their entire publications to the censors and the authorities normally take no measures against them for this failure. Despite the fact that Israeli law allows the authorities to use legal sanctions against those who publish pro-PLO material, the West Bank papers regularly and conspicuously include PLO slogans, speeches of PLO leaders, reports of the decisions of PLO bodies, eulogies of terrorists who are presented as martyrs. Anti-Israel terrorism (under its PLO code name of “armed struggle”) is regularly extolled.

Mr. Goldstein does not deny my statement that “pro-PLO editorials are permitted,” but takes exception to my assertion that anticipatory and predictive “reporting” in the form of a headline announcing an upcoming PLO-ordered strike is in fact “a call for a strike,” and a way in which editors “sometimes get around” the prohibition against overt and direct incitement to violence. As for the nature of the strikes, anyone familiar with the situation in the West Bank knows that PLO-ordered strikes are quite violent affairs. The Israeli censor too is well aware of this. He is also aware that advance publicizing of a PLO-ordered strike is a means of getting around the prohibition of direct and overt incitement, and he therefore prohibits such “news” items. But, as Mr. Goldstein admits, “they occasionally do reach print,” which is precisely what I said. Mr. Goldstein’s claim that I have termed this type of circumvention a direct and overt incitement is yet another example of his tactic of distorting my words.

Although it is unquestionably true that the Palestinian press under Israeli rule enjoys more freedom from official intervention than the media in any Arab country, I must decline Mr. Goldstein’s offer to describe this Palestinian press as “among the freest in the Middle East.” I consider it grotesque to use the adjective “free” to describe papers funded and controlled by terrorist organizations. Despite Mr.Goldstein’s angry protestations, it remains a fact that nonintervention (meaning specifically the allowance of all sorts of political, educational, and journalistic anti-Israel activity by Palestinians) has been the guiding principle of both the doctrine and the practice of the IMG.

The truth is that the consequences of this policy have been far less beneficial to Arab-Jewish relations and to the peace process than its proponents claimed they would be. Unfortunately, those who would have us believe that nonintervention is always the acme of wisdom and morality would prefer to ignore or obfuscate this truth. Ironically enough, they thereby join a motley coalition which includes those Israelis and Palestinians who for quite different reasons prefer the continuation of the status quo, harmful as it is, to an active policy aimed at changing it. But all of us who, like myself, hope for improved relations between Israelis and Palestinians and want to see the end of the occupation through a process of negotiation leading to a political settlement and peace must realize that a reexamination of the IMG’s so-called nonintervention policy is long overdue.

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