Israeli Peace Offers, Palestinian Rock Throwing Are M.I.A in Post Report

A June 28, 2018 Washington Post report, “Prince William visit Jerusalem’s holy sites, concluding historic visit,” omitted key context and details about the Duke of Cambridge’s trip to Israel and areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority (PA).

Prince William was the first member of the British Royal Family to make an official trip to Israel since the Jewish state was recreated in 1948. Washington Post correspondent Ruth Eglash noted the significance of the Prince’s visit and claimed that it comes “at a time when peace seems more elusive than ever for Israelis and Palestinians.”

The Post, however, failed to provide readers with details as to why that might be the case.

As CAMERA has detailed, the PA has refused numerous U.S. and Israeli offers for a Palestinian state in exchange for peace with the Jewish state. More recently, the PA refused offers in 2000 at Camp David, 2001 at Taba, and 2008 after the Annapolis Conference—as well as U.S. proposals to restart negotiations in 2014 and 2016. Yet, not only did the PA reject these opportunities, its leaders refused to so much as make a counteroffer.

The Washington Post failed to mention this history—despite its obvious relevance to their report. Indeed, Eglash reported that “some Israelis were upset that the Jerusalem portion” of the Prince’s itinerary was “billed as part of a visit to the ‘occupied Palestinian territories.’”

“Much of the world,” the reporter wrote, “does not recognize Israel’s sovereignty over the eastern parts of the city, which Palestinians hope will become the capital of the future state.”

Yet, the 2008 offer, among others, would have provided the Palestinians with a state with its capital in eastern Jerusalem. It is odd that The Post chose not to mention that the PA rejected precisely what they claim Palestinians “hope” to obtain.

The Post also omitted other aspects of the Prince’s visit. According to Khaled Abu Toameh, an Arab Israeli journalist, on June 27, 2018: “Palestinian children threw rocks at Prince William’s convoy in Jelazoun refugee camp, north of Ramallah. No one was hurt and there was no damage.”

That same day, the Israeli Knesset approved a law that would deduct funds to the PA “commensurate with the amount of money the Palestinians pay to terrorists and their families,” the writer Bassam Tawil noted. The PA responded to the Israeli law by vowing that it would “not abandon the prisoners and the families of the martyrs.” The “martyrs” that the PA is talking about “are in fact Palestinian terrorists, who were killed by the Israeli army or police during attacks on Jews,” Tawil noted in a June 28, 2018 Gatestone Institute report.

The PA’s promise to pay terrorists—and the passage of an Israeli law to discourage the policy—was not mentioned in The Post’s report. Indeed, although the paper noted that the Prince “visited [PA President Mahmoud] Abbas in Ramallah,” they failed to report the Palestinian leaders comments during the meeting. On the same day that his government vowed to keep paying terrorists, Abbas told the Prince he was “serious about reaching peace with Israel” and Palestinians were “committed to combating terrorism.”

Apparently, The Post didn’t deign the PA’s duplicity—or its support for terror and rejection of peace—to be worth reporting.