AMMAN, 22 October 2004 — A 17-day Israeli onslaught in northern Gaza left in its wake nearly 140 dead, one-third of them children. In many ways, it was reminiscent of the invasion of Jenin in April 2002 when hundreds of people were killed and maimed, and thousands more were left grief-stricken, homeless and defenseless.

Why is it that such blatant state terrorism compels no serious response from the world community?

As far as I see it, the casual callousness of humanity at large is not what is to blame here. What makes these tragedies much more appalling is the media’s eagerness to embrace the “official narratives” with their one-sided framing of any conflict, omitting the needed overall context.

Sidestepping ancient history for once, let’s briefly examine the last few years, the period immediately preceding the Palestinian uprising.

The Israeli narrative was adamantly consistent, until recently: Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat orchestrated the intifada all along; he had no intention of reaching a final and comprehensive peace agreement with Israel, that is why he turned down “a very generous” offer presented by then Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak at Camp David (July 2000); at present there is no Palestinian (peace) partner; Israel must do all it can to protect its citizens, even if it has to seek peace unilaterally; hence, Ariel Sharon’s Gaza disengagement plan.

Palestinians too had their own narrative, but it was too little, too late. The American government and media had already championed the Israeli narrative, with much more enthusiasm than Israelis themselves.

But the fact is there was no generous Barak offer to begin with, according to Robert Malley, special assistant to President Bill Clinton for Arab-Israeli Affairs and his advisor at Camp David. Barak never unveiled his “offer” — not in writing, not verbally, not even to the United States itself. “It is hard to state with confidence how far Barak was actually prepared to go,” Malley wrote in his piece published in the New York Review of Books. “His strategy was predicated on the belief that Israel ought not reveal its final position — not even to the United States — until the endgame was in sight.” And it never was.

How about the banter that “at present there is no Palestinian (peace) partner” — the rhetoric that US officials parrot as frequently as Israelis?

According to the former chief of the Israeli Military Intelligence (MI) Gen. Amos Malka, Amos Gilad, the head of the research section at the MI office, is the author of the fib that the Palestinians were not partners in the peace process, and that Arafat was hell-bent on the destruction of Israel. Gen. Malka in his interview with the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz asserts that Gilad had no basis whatsoever to his assertions, save his own personal views, as twisted as they were.

Gilad was “a very significant factor in persuading a great many people. (Yet) in all the time that I served as head of MI, the research division did not produce so much as a single document expressing the assessment that Gilad claims to have presented to the (then) Prime Minister (Ehud Barak.),” Malka said. But the US administration, and to an equal extent, the media, seem not to take notice of what should’ve been a ground-shaking revelation. And there is another dimension that should be equally considered: Sharon’s unilateral disengagement plan. Sharon took this unilateral decision because, “Israel has come to the conclusion that at present, there is no Palestinian partner with whom it is possible to make progress on a bilateral peace process.” Regrettably, the Middle East “Quartet” — the UN, the EU, Russia and the US — recognized this Israeli document. The US was especially grateful to Israel for her painful “concessions”.

But that too was a scam. Dov Weisglass, Israel’s former chief of staff, and Sharon’s closest personal advisor (according to the Washington Post) diminished the entire discourse that accompanied Sharon’s phony concessions. Weisglass told Haaretz that the disengagement plan was intended to “freeze” the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, to guarantee that 80 percent of the West Bank’s illegal Jewish settlements remained in place and to eradicate any possibility of establishing an independent Palestinian state; all that with the knowledge and “blessing” of the United States government.

“What I affectively agreed to with the Americans was that part of the settlements would not be dealt with at all, and the rest will not be dealt with until Palestinians turn into Finns,” Weisglass revealed. The disengagement plan “supplied the amount of formaldehyde that is necessary so there will not be a political process with the Palestinians.” He continues, in unmistakably self-congratulating tone: “(As a result) you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state, and you prevent a discussion on the refugees, the borders and Jerusalem.”

The Palestinian narrative — even if it’s closest to the truth — holds little weight in much of the Western, especially US mainstream media. But when Israeli officials themselves dismiss their own forgeries and wish to come clean, the US media fails to see a need for a change of course.

Meanwhile, in northern Gaza, currently under way are 140 funerals, hundreds of people being left disfigured or forever paralyzed. Palestinians say that what happened in northern Gaza was a “massacre” intended as a form of “collective punishment” and that Sharon never intended to leave Gaza.

Two narratives, one truth, an abundance of precedents, and the rest is history.

— Ramzy Baroud is a veteran Arab-American journalist.