History of Palestinian journalism

The history of Palestinian journalism dates back to the 19th century, and more newspapers in

However, the emerging press was soon suppressed after the outbreak of World War I in 1914.^[3] When Palestine became a British Mandate in 1920, its press became more diverse, as over 250 Arabic newspapers and 65 in other languages were circulating in Mandatory Palestine by the mid-1930s.^[3][4] The British began to introduce restrictive measures after the 1929 Palestine riots, and suspended many major publications during the 1936–1939 Arab revolt.^[3] Following the outbreak of World War II in 1939, the British authorities closed almost all the newspapers, with the exception of Falastin and Al-Difa', whose rivalry marked the mandate period.^[5][6]

The

The first printing house in Palestine was established in Safed in 1577 by Rabbi Avraham ben Yitzchak Ashkenazi and Eliezer ben Isaac Ashkenazi, who printed ten books between 1577 and 1587, the first books ever printed in the Near East. The same type was used by Josiah ben Joseph Pinto in Damascus in 1605.^[18][19]

The Ottoman Empire banned use of the printing press from its invention in the 15th century until the mid-1700s, and the banned of its public use until the mid-1800s, which was one of the main obstacles preventing the early onset of journalism in the region.^[20]

In 1831, Yisrael Bak reestablished a printing house in Safed, moving it to Jerusalem in 1841 following an earthquake in Safed. A second printing house was opened in Jerusalem in 1862, and Jerusalem became the primary printing centre in the Palestine region for the rest of the 19th century.^[19]

The printing press also began to be used by Christian institutions to produce religious texts, first by Jerusalem's Franciscan Church in 1846, and followed afterwards by the Armenian and Greek Churches.^[21] The first daily privately-published Arabic-language newspapers in the Ottoman Empire's Arab provinces, which enjoyed varying degrees of autonomy, appeared in Beirut in 1873 and in Cairo in 1875. By the year 1908 Egypt boasted 627 publications with a circulation of around 100,000.^[22]

The first newspaper published in Palestine was

The first Arabic-language newspaper in Palestine was a gazette called Al-Quds Al-Sharif established in 1876, written in Arabic and Ottoman Turkish and edited by Sheikh Ali Rimawi and ‘Abd al-Salam Kamal respectively. It closed shortly after and reopened in 1903.^[1] Arabic periodicals only reappeared in Palestine following the 1908 Young Turk Revolution, which lifted press censorship in the empire.^[28] About fifteen publications emerged in that year, and another twenty were published before the onset of World War I in 1914.^[28] Nearly another 180 were published during the British Mandate for Palestine (1920–1948).^[29] However, launching newspapers was easier than sustaining them, as most of these periodicals lasted for a short period of time, especially considering the competition with high quality periodicals from Beirut and Cairo, such as the Egyptian Al-Ahram (The Pyramids).^[30]

In 1897 the Printing Workers' Association was established, the first trade union in the region.^[19]

Three of Palestine's leading Arabic-language newspapers of the pre-

These early Arab Palestinian newspapers saw Ottoman Jews as loyal subjects to the empire, but condemned Zionism, and grew fearful of it due to the waves of European Jewish immigrants to Palestine, who built settlements relying on Jewish labor and excluded Arab ones. Thus, Arab editors began a public awareness campaign, warning that once the Zionist project was fulfilled, the Arab majority and their lands in Palestine would be lost.^[32] A common theme in the press of this early period is a criticism directed towards the European Jewish immigrants who failed to integrate, or bother learning Arabic.^[33] The Arab editors preferred to raise the issue to the public's attention rather than the Ottoman authorities, so that the public can be active in preventing land sales to Jews, which caused Arab peasants' eviction, and their subsequent loss of work.^[32]

The readership of the newspapers in this early period was limited, but it had been expanding. Literacy rates were relatively low; however, social centers where created, such as libraries, the town cafe and the village guesthouse, where men would read aloud articles from newspapers and engage in political discussions. "Newspaper breaks" used to take place in some factories.^[34] There was also recorded instances of newspapers sending a copy of their newspaper to villages in the surrounding areas, namely Falastin.^[35] Articles from Falastin and Al-Karmil were often reprinted in other local papers and national ones in Beirut, Damascus, and Cairo.^[34]

The Palestinian press was suppressed due to the outbreak of World War I in 1914, and only two main newspapers from the Ottoman period were reopened during the British Mandate, Al-Karmil and Falastin.^[36] During the mandate period, the press became more diverse than in the Ottoman period, and reflected different political factions and national consciousness. In 1918, the Haaretz Hebrew-language newspaper, sponsored by the British military government in Palestine, was established in Jerusalem.^[37] In 1919, it was taken over by a group of socialist-oriented Zionists, mainly from Russia, including the philanthropist Isaac Leib Goldberg;^[38][39][40] it was initially called Hadashot Ha'aretz ("News of the Land").^[41] The literary section of the paper attracted leading Hebrew writers of the time.^[42]

According to one survey in the mid-1930s, over 250 Arabic newspapers and 65 in other languages were circulating in Mandatory Palestine.^[3] The British had adopted the Ottoman Press Law that had mandated for newspapers the licensing of their franchises and the submission of translations of their work to authorities; however, the British did not interfere in the press until the 1929 Palestine riots between Arabs and Jews.^[3] The events of that year led to a radicalization of Arab newspapers, and the British changed their initially tolerant position to a more restrictive approach.^[5]

Most of these publications appeared weekly and the number of copies distributed increased gradually. While most newspapers distributed hundreds of copies each during the Ottoman period, this figure increased to 1,000–1,500 during the Mandate period in the 1920s.

In the 1920s, the Hebrew-language Palestinian press, including Haaretz, increasingly moved from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv, whilst the Arabic-language press remained in Jerusalem.^[19][39]

Falastin became the first Palestinian newspaper to succeed in establishing itself as a daily in October 1929, a month after it had started publishing a weekly English-language edition.^[45][46][47] And the establishment of Al-Difa in April 1934 was considered an important event in the history of Palestinian journalism during the mandate period, as it managed to attract professional journalists from several Arab countries. A rivalry developed between these two largest dailies, Falastin and Al-Difa, which saw improvements in their quality.^[48] Al-Difa expanded its readership to the rural and Muslim communities, portraying itself a counterweight to the Christian-owned Falastin.^[48] While Falastin aimed to show that it served the whole nation by highlighting how uneducated people enjoyed reading their paper, in an implied criticism towards Al-Difa which had come to rely on intellectuals with a complex writing style.^[6] Many weeklies found it difficult to compete with these two dailies.^[49]

In the 1930s, two outspoken newspapers were established in Jaffa: Al-Jami'a Al-Islamiya (The Islamic Union) in 1932; and Al-Difa' (The Defense) in 1934, which was associated with Hizb Al-Istiqlal (The Independence Party).^[3] Al-Liwaa (The Banner) was published in Jerusalem in 1934 by Jamal al-Husayni, who was the leader of the Palestine Arab Party.^[3][50] Many of the editors and owners of newspapers were similarly members of political organizations, and used their publications for mobilizing the public.^[4]

In 1932, the English-language

The British authorities issued a new Publications Law and other regulations in 1933 that gave them the authority to suspend newspapers and punish journalists, which restricted freedom of the press.[5] As a result, the use of colloquial writing style by the press intensified, especially during the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine.^[6] Many major publications were suspended for extended periods between 1937 and 1938, including Falastin, Al-Difa, and Al-Liwa. After the outbreak of World War II in 1939, emergency laws were enacted and the British closed almost all the newspapers, except Falastin and Al-Difa, due to the publishing of censored news and the adoption of more moderate positions.^[55][5]

The

In the 1950s, a number of newspapers were established as affiliates of

The Jordanian government of Wasfi Tal issued a new Press and Publications Law in early 1967 that forced the merger of Al-Difa and Al-Jihad to produce Jerusalem-based Al-Quds (not to be confused with the newspaper of the same name 1908–1914); and the merger of Falastin and Al-Manar to produce Amman-based Ad-Dustour (The Constitution); both of these newspapers are still published to this day. Ad-Dustour and Al-Difa' newspapers were both briefly suspended during Black September in 1970 after having published a Palestine Liberation Organization statement that cast blame on Jordan's government for the conflict. As a result of the events of Black September and low wages paid to journalists, many professionals of Palestinian origin moved to Arab Gulf states.^[8]

The 1967

In the wake of the peace process, namely the 1993

As of 2021, there are more than 50 online and print newspapers circulating in Palestine.[61] Journalism in Palestine today suffers from restrictions imposed by the Palestinian Authority's Cyber Crimes Law enacted in 2017.^[62]

Al-Aqsa Library located in the Old City of East Jerusalem in the Israeli-occupied West Bank has more than seventy Arabic newspapers, magazines, and journals published in Palestine, in addition to ones that were published in other Arab countries and by Arab communities in Europe, and South and North America. The library in some instances holds the only copy available in the region.^[21] The National Library of Israel's Jarayed collection of Arabic newspapers in the Ottoman and British periods is available online.^[63]

Palestinian-American historian Rashid Khalidi wrote in his book titled The Hundred Years' War on Palestine:^[64]

One crucial window into Palestinians' perceptions of themselves and their understanding of events between the wars is the Palestinian press. Two newspapers, Issa El-Issa's Jaffa publication, Falastin, and Al-Karmil, published in Haifa by Najib Nassar, were bastions of local patriotism, and critics of the Zionist-British entente and the danger that it posed to the Arab majority in Palestine. They were among the most influential beacons of the idea of Palestinian identity.

Print newspapers have been challenged by the rise of

Palestinian young citizens have been filming, creating and distributing videos showing Israeli settler violence, Israeli military violations, and the realities of living under Israeli occupation.^[15] Human Rights Watch has documented a "systematic censorship" campaign by social media companies like Meta Platforms, which owns Facebook and Instagram, which has targeted accounts of Palestinian activists, including journalists, through bans and limiting their content's reach.^[17][65]

The ongoing Gaza war, which started on 7 October 2023, saw a steep increase in the social media following of Palestinian journalists based in the Gaza Strip, including Motaz Azaiza and Plestia Alaqad, whose accounts, particularly on Instagram and TikTok, have swelled to millions of followers due to their documentation of the war as very few foreign journalists were allowed into the strip.^[66] Notably, in 2023 journalist and influencer Bisan Owda won a Peabody Award for her TikTok series It’s Bisan from Gaza and I’m Still Alive.^[67]

The British authorities established the region's first radio station named Palestine Broadcasting Service (PBS) in 1936 to compete with the politicized print journalism.^[68] PBS' studios were located in Jerusalem, while the tower and transmitter were located in Ramallah. It aired broadcasts in Arabic, English and Hebrew.^[69] The studios in Jerusalem were taken over by Zionist militias during the 1948 Palestine war, while the tower and transmitter in Ramallah were taken over by Jordan, which added a studio and launched the Hashemite Broadcasting Service (HBS) throughout its administration of the West Bank until 1967.^[68]

After Israel occupied the