Promoting a well-worn narrative on the BBC News website

BBC News recycles selected comments from an interview with the US president.

On February 11th the BBC News website published an article headlined “Trump warns Israel that settlements ‘complicate’ peace hopes” on its Middle East page.

Based entirely on an interview given by the US president to an Israeli newspaper, the article opened:

“US President Donald Trump has said Israeli settlements “complicate” the peace process with Palestinians and urged “care” over the issue.

He also told an Israeli newspaper that he did not believe the Palestinians, and possibly Israel as well, were ready to make peace.”

The parts of that interview which the BBC chose to highlight were as follows:

“Asked by editor-in-chief Boaz Bismouth when the US would present its peace plan, Mr Trump said: “We will see what happens. Right now the Palestinians are not into making peace, they are just not into it. Regarding Israel, I am not certain it, too, is interested in making peace so we will just need to wait and see what happens.”

Asked whether Israeli settlements would form part of the peace plan, he said: “We will be talking about settlements. The settlements are something that very much complicates and always have complicated making peace, so I think Israel has to be very careful with the settlements.””

And:

“In excerpts of the interview published on Friday, Mr Trump said that recognising Jerusalem as Israel’s capital had been a highlight of his first year in office.

“I think Jerusalem was a very big point and I think it was a very important point,” he said.

“The capital, having Jerusalem be your great capital, was a very important thing to a lot of people. It was a very important pledge that I made and I fulfilled my pledge,” he said.”

Readers also found promotion of the corporation’s standard mantra on ‘settlements’ which – in spite of ‘due impartiality’ requirementsfails to inform audiences of the existence of legal opinions that do not conform to the BBC’s chosen narrative.

“More than 600,000 Jews live in about 140 settlements built since Israel’s 1967 occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The settlements are considered illegal under international law, though Israel disputes this.”

The BBC’s selected framing was further promoted in a photo caption:

“Jewish settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem have long been a stumbling block to peace deal”.

As readers who bothered to click on the link to the Israel HaYom article upon which this report is based would see, the US president also answered questions additional topics including Iran’s presence in Syria and Lebanon, the JCPOA, relations between Israel and Gulf states and Egypt’s role in the ‘peace process’.

While the BBC apparently did not consider the US president’s comments on those topics interesting or important enough to report, it did go to the trouble of constructing an entire article around the three responses to the twenty questions asked by the interviewer which could be used to once again promote the political narrative the BBC has chosen to adopt.  

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