Hope and dread in representing Palestine-Israel: a case study of editorials in the British broadsheets

Abstract

ABSTRACTPart of a comprehensive study to analyse British broadsheets’ coverage of the First Gaza War, this paper examines the moral arguments presented in editorials. Doing so, it showcases a non-dualist, relational inquiry of the representation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Instead of focusing on what is empirically ‘true’, morally ‘right’, and ethnically ‘Israeli/Jewish’ or ‘Palestinian/Arab’ as extra-discursive categories, it approaches them as discursive constructions and asks what relations, what forms of lives the editorials cultivate in representing them. The analysis demonstrates that whilst newspapers overwhelmingly imagine isolated and ahistorical essences to clash in Palestine-Israel, they do not exclusively do so. Traces of a discourse of relations, where ‘I’ (Palestinian or Israeli) is partly constituted by the ‘Other’ (Israeli or Palestinian) can also be found in the editorials. It is with the vicissitudes of such relational accounts that the article concludes.