Alaa Yousef, a Palestinian oral history researcher, has said the Middle East's long-standing issue, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, has lost its priority both in the Arab world and the international community due to the many conflicts and civil wars that were sparked in the region after the Arab Spring. The Arab Spring was a wave of revolutionary demonstrations and protests that occurred in the Arab world beginning on Dec. 18, 2010. During a panel discussion titled “Future of Palestinian Conflict in Middle East after the Arab Spring” at Fatih University in İstanbul on Monday, participants discussed the existing or potential effects of the Arab Spring on the future of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The panel discussion was organized jointly by a think tank, the İstanbul Institute, and the Fatih University Politics Club. Attending the panel as a resident of Palestine, Yousef said the Palestinian-Israeli conflict has lost its priority both in the media and the international humanitarian efforts after the “so-called Arab Spring,” saying that civil wars and internal conflicts were sparked in major Middle Eastern countries such as Libya and Syria following the Arab uprising. “Now, incidents in Syria, Iraq and Yemen have been attracting more attention from both the Arab and international media rather than the Palestinian conflict. There is less international concern about the Palestinian-Israeli issue and lack of financial support for the Palestinians.” Saying that the Arab world has been weakened due to the civil wars and conflicts that erupted after the Arab Spring, Yousef added: “The fact that some Arab countries were weakened due to the Arab Spring also weakened Palestine. The strongest armies of the Arab world are now busy with conflicts, so there is less pressure on Israel for its wrongdoings on Palestinian land.” Also speaking during the panel, Kerim Balcı, editor-in-chief of the Turkish Review, pointed to the way the Palestinian conflict is being covered in the Turkish media. Balcı criticized the fact there are not many journalists working in the field and that Turkish journalists just cover what international news agencies such as Reuters and AP report. He added that Turkish newspapers and journalists focus on developments that might attract the attention of the readers rather than covering what is really going on in the region, so most Turks do not know much about the history or details of the Palestinian conflict. “The journalists have started to measure the value of a report about Palestine according to the number of casualties or deaths. If there are not a lot of deaths in an attack or incident, some newspapers do not bother to cover it,” Balcı added. Radikal daily columnist Fehim Taştekin, who was in Gaza when Israel conducted its large-scale deadly offensive against Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip in July 2014, shared his personal observations about the offensive during his panel speech. He said Palestinians in Gaza were besieged from every angle as if living in an “open prison,” adding that the people of Gaza even lacked clean water to drink as their drinking water was used up by the Israelis. “Despite being in the middle of a war, I observed that they never lost hope and their will to survive. I did not see any beggars or anyone crying on the streets. I also did not see any Palestinian even fearing anything. They went on with their lives despite all the problems around them,” Taştekin said. Israel launched the offensive in Gaza in July of last year. What began with air strikes later turned into a ground war. Palestinian officials say nearly 1,900 Palestinians were killed in the month-long fighting, three-quarters of them civilians, according to the United Nations. Israel says about 900 Palestinian militants were among the dead. Sixty-four Israeli soldiers and three civilians in Israel were also killed.

• published: 04 May 2015
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