Browsing by Subject "Israeli-Palestinian conflict"
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Item Open Access Granting Voice to Civil Society: Testing the Indexing Hypothesis in American, Israeli, and Lebanese Newspaper Coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict(2010-12-10) Weinberger, LaurenThis study tests W. Lance Bennett’s indexing hypothesis in The New York Times (USA), The Jerusalem Post (Israel), and the Daily Star (Lebanon), analyzing their coverage of the Israeli disengagement from the Gaza strip from December 18, 2003 until September 12, 2005. This research focuses on the extent to which non-government officials, and NGOs particularly, were used as sources within this coverage. In considering all three newspapers, government sources were utilized at a rate of 68-69% within non-opinion pieces, with NGOs constituting 1-5% of sources. Variation in the use of government vs. non-government sources was not statistically significant when comparing the three newspapers, thus indicating that the indexing hypothesis was applicable in the context of American, Israeli, and Lebanese English-language media. While literature indicates the importance of civil society organizations in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, their voices were rarely apparent in the coverage analyzed. Interviews with NGO representatives and reporters revealed several possible explanations for the heavy use of government sources found in this study, including: the possibility that government officials have greater resources than NGOs in reaching out to the press, NGOs influence news coverage by speaking to reporters but are not cited explicitly as sources in articles, and that the specific case study of the disengagement particularly lends itself to the use of government sources.Item Open Access The Political Impact of Islamic Fundamentalist Bloc on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict(2010) Park, JaeeunThis study investigates the interaction between political influences of Islamic fundamentalist parties and the Israeli-Palestinian conflicts. The author selects four salient actors, based on five characteristics of contemporary Islamic fundamentalist groups: the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, the Palestinian Hamas, the Lebanese Hezbollah, and the Iranian conservatives. With evidences of intertwined supports among them, the author analyzes the cooperative bloc between a state and non-state groups. After Iranian conservatives came to power, Iran's political supports enhanced influences of Hezbollah and Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, and then helped Hamas seize power finally. Their radical foreign policies intend to end Israeli occupation in the Palestinian territories. The theoretical model generates two predictions about strategies of the bloc. First, high political influence in each government is expected to worsen the Israeli-Palestinian conflicts. Second, due to Israel's strong military power, the expected strategy of the bloc is a symbolic war that more rhetoric and less Israeli casualties. Using cross-tabulation model, the author finds that the attack numbers are alone increased along with the high political influences, during the given period between 2000 and 2009. Their strong political power and secure cooperative bloc impede democratizing and promoting peace in the Middle East.