13 June 2012
The 2012 Media Seminar on Peace in the Middle East held two panel discussions to explore the impact of the Arab Spring on media coverage of the question of Palestine and to examine the role of women’s activism and the media in Israeli-Palestinian peace and the wider region on 12 June in the afternoon.
Participants in the first panel session spoke about the coverage of Palestine and the Arab Spring by the Israeli media and the perspectives of Israeli society and how it has viewed events in the region over the past 18 months with fear and uncertainty. Before the Arab Spring, the world saw Muslims as a security threat and incompatible with democracy; after the events in Tahrir Square a shift happened in the Western media, which wanted to know more about the Muslim world, but this shift did not happen in Israel. The Arab Spring was a story that was still happening and also a story that was still at its beginning; it would therefore be premature to draw a conclusion on the permanent impact of the Arab Spring on the Palestinian cause.