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Abstract
A reading of Palestinian newspapers and magazines published in the occupied West Bank after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war reveals that the press has managed to "name" or define Palestinians and their friends and foes, explain the nature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, describe the Palestinian past and the Palestinian vision of the future, despite stringent nightly censorship.
Examples of censored and uncensored text drawn from eleven Palestinian newspapers and magazines published in East Jerusalem are used to describe what Israeli military censors delete, and what escapes their censorship. The correspondence between two Israeli chief censors and two Palestinian editors-in-chief, exchanged between 1973 and 1989, is analyzed to illustrate the main thesis of this study: that to censor is to negotiate the definition of reality, and that negotiation is possible because of the nature of power as a relational concept.
Gaps in censorship are explained by examining how the Israeli libertarian/authoritarian dialectic affects power relations between the censored and the censors. The study also illustrates how Palestinian editors-in-chief wrest authority from the censors by using Palestinian political, organizational, informational and linguistic resources, and by enlarging the scope of the conflict by becoming "reliable sources" to Western and some Israeli journalists. This study stresses the importance of symbolic communication and of the social nature of cognition in censorship, and shows how journalists draw on the language they share with their "interpretive community" to evade censorship and resist the normalization of the Israeli occupation.
The study concludes that censorship is negotiated almost on a daily basis. Negotiation is possible because of the nature of power: even the less powerful have resources they bring to the negotiation with the powerful, as laws are interpreted in organizations, and as language is used both to censor and to resist censorship.
