Al-Jazeera Coverage

Wind the clock back to when the Palestinian Papers were saturating the news coverage on Al-Jazeera English. It was not clear whether the purpose was to discredit the Palestinian Authority or to show that it is in fact Israel who is not a true peace partner or to rub salt in the wounds of the Palestinian people, and those close to the cause. Maybe all three. But really, was anyone suprised by any of the information in the leaks?

None the less, I became bored with the never ending analysis and "what do you make of these leaks?" asked to every Middle East boffin between here and Washington. Nothing will change for the Palestinian situation until the Arab world changes and stops supporting American foreign policy especially in regard to Israel. So to stop wasting my time I changed channel - to the BBC world service and was delighted to find out there would be a special program on that night about Yemen - Is it a failed state? Cliche!

The time came for the program to start when breaking news came in - the Tunisian President had stepped down a fled to Saudi Arabia. So now there was blanket coverage of the events before, during and after the Presidents demise. Palestinian Papers were filed away for a rainy day and no Yemen program.

I felt happy a dictator had fallen, but I wanted to watch my Yemen program. "Yemen needs an uprising if it is going to get any airtime now," I thought to myself. Then Tunis news was eaten up by Egyptian news. And then the domino effect, I think you get my drift.

So Yemen whose people have been demonstrating for years, is actually getting quite a bit of news time on Al-Jazeera and it feels that the broadcaster is almost encouraging, tempting further dictator demises, giving lots of coverage on protests in Algeria, Yemen, Bahrain and Libya. And especially the words of President Obama  and Hilary Clinton encouraging the people of the Middle East to rise up against evil dictators, and that America supports the democratic aspirations of all people.

After all these decades of supporting these dictators America wipes its hands of them and is now tempting the people. I hope the people see the emptiness of the American words. America supports the democratic aspirations of Muslims towards kufr - disbelief. Don't let their words decieve you, and what makes you think they will stand by you once they have achieved their aims. Dispensable, the people of the Middle East are dispensible, always have been and always will be.

 So what happened as after of the Palestine Papers...oh yeah, thats right, Saeb Erekat, the Palestinian chief negotiator stepped down. The Arab world started making big moves towards change and hope has been reborn...Maybe I and many others I know will stop being bored with Palestine coverage once new Arab governments ammend the foreign policies of old.