BBC still promoting the myth of a demilitarized zone that doesn’t exist

October 1st saw the appearance of a report titled “Syria peacekeeping ‘impossible’ – Philippines leader” on the BBC News website’s Asia and Middle East pages. The article relates to statements made by the President of the Philippines at a welcoming ceremony for his country’s soldiers formerly stationed with UNDOF in the Golan Heights.UNDOF Phil Pres art

“President Aquino on Wednesday raised the possibility the Philippines would no longer deploy Filipino troops in UN peacekeeping operations during ceremonies in Malacañang where he led a hero’s welcome for soldiers pulled out from the Golan Heights where they had battled Syrian rebels late last August. […]

The President criticized the United Nations for rejecting requests to provide additional firearms for Filipino peacekeepers, who faced what he called “mission impossible” in the Golan Heights. […]

“When the situation changed, when rebels began to show up in this area of disengagement, [the United Nations] should have addressed the situation and said there was a new mission,” he said.”

Since late August the BBC News website has produced numerous articles on the topic of the UNDOF mission – see here, here, here, here and here . This latest report brings the total number of articles on the subject published in the five weeks between August 28th and October 1st 2014 to nine.

Most of those reports include standard statements along the lines of this one from the latest article:

“Israel seized most of the Golan Heights, a strategic plateau in south-western Syria, during the 1967 Six-Day War.

The two countries signed an armistice in 1974, after which the UN Disengagement Observer Force was put in place to monitor the demilitarised zone.

It has 1,224 lightly armed military personnel from Fiji, India, Ireland, Nepal, the Netherlands and the Philippines.”

As this latest report and a quotation in the BBC’s September 1st article both illustrate, countries contributing personnel to UNDOF are well aware of the fact that the situation on the ground has changed significantly in the past couple of years and the terms of 1974 armistice agreement cited by the BBC are no longer being upheld.

” “I’ve made it very clear that I’m not going to continue to commit Irish troops to this mission unless there’s a very fundamental review of how it’s going to operate. Clearly this is no longer a demilitarized zone,” Irish Defence Minister Simon Coveney told RTE radio.”

Recent reports from the UN Secretary General and the Security Council both reflect the changes brought about by the fact that the UN’s presence failed to keep the DMZ demilitarized.

UN SC UNDOF

The widely reported infiltration of a Syrian military aircraft into Israeli territory on September 23rd was only covered by the BBC News website in the form of a brief announcement on a live page being run that day on the subject of US airstrikes against ISIS. 

Syrian aircraft infiltration 23 9

BBC audiences continue to remain in the dark with regard to the significant changes and developments in that particular part of the Middle East due to the fact that the corporation continues to use long redundant template descriptions of the region in its articles and its area profile, hence impeding audience understanding of current and future events. 

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