The curly-haired perfume peddler has another go

The last time we visited Reuters correspondent Crispian (curly-haired) Balmer (peddler of aromatic resins), he was exhausting the "D" entries in his thesaurus in an effort to sell us on the notion that the Palestinians are positively desperate for their own state -- even as he failed to acknowledge the simple truth that the Palestinians could have their purportedly longed-for state tomorrow if they would only accept UN resolution 181 which formally created a Palestinian Arab state and a Jewish state 63 years ago.

Balmer now tries his hand at some "analysis", Reuters parlance for an op-ed, dredging up a host of Reuters boilerplate propaganda in the process.  Focusing on the question of whether Israel's relationship with the United States is on the rocks, Balmer cites the reaction of Palestinian Arabs and Middle East diplomats to the incentives reportedly promised to the Israelis in exchange for their agreement to extend a building moratorium in Judea and Samaria (the "West Bank"):

The Palestinians scoff at the idea that the United States might be losing its ardor for Israel, saying the U.S. promise of inducements, including $3 billion worth of fighter jets, is evidence of the Jewish state's privileged status in Washington.
The enticements have also raised eyebrows in the United States, with analysts doubting the wisdom of offering Israel incentives to get it to introduce a temporary halt to settlement building that is deemed to be illegal by the World Court.

Note how Balmer tosses in as a red herring, the opinion of the World Court, something the analysts he cites do not actually mention and an opinion that is entirely advisory and therefore non-binding on the issue of the legality of Jewish settlements (League of Nations and United Nations resolutions permit Jews to settle anywhere in the original Palestine Mandate).

Balmer then rehashes the argument made back in April by his colleague at Reuters, Bernd Debusmann, that resolving the Israeli-Arab conflict is essential to American military interests in the Middle East and beyond:

At a deeper level, the on-going sense of uncertainty in Israeli circles is fueled by evolving U.S. military objectives.
General David Petraeus, commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, launched a debate in March when he said that Israeli-Palestinian tensions had had an "enormous" impact in the Muslim world where his troops were based.
Petraeus said the Middle East peace process had to keep moving forward to help the U.S. military position -- an assertion quickly challenged by Israeli rightists who denied any such linkage.
His stance explains why Obama has put enormous emphasis on restarting the stalled peace talks despite obvious pessimism on both the Palestinian and Israeli side, not to mention at home.

As we noted at the time, Debusmann conveniently omitted several items Patraeus indicated were far more critical to American interests than resolving the Israeli-Arab conflict, including for example, preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons which as we now know, thanks to WikiLeaks, has also been the priority for the Arabs themselves.

Moreover, Obama had been pushing madly for a Palestinian state long before Patraeus filed his report in March of this year (Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas was the first foreign leader Obama phoned after taking office, and pressure from the White House to freeze Jewish settlements began publicly in May of 2009).  Thus, Balmer's suggested linkage between Patraeus' testimony and Obama's obsessive drive for a Palestinian state is specious.

The larger point, that US-Israeli relations may be suffering, is clear enough but the reason is also clear: this is the first American administration in over 40 years that has held peace negotiations between the Israelis and the Arabs hostage to an Israeli concession to completely halt building in its capital city.  A strategy that has failed to bring a Palestinian state and simultaneously alienated 97 percent of the Israeli public.

Now, that's something to fret about.

For Reuters, Iran says "potāto"; the West says "potäto"

Reuters loves to frame the Iranian nuclear debate as a "he said/she said", i.e., the "West" says Iran is working towards nuclear weapons; Iran says it is only seeking nuclear power for electricity generation.  Here's an example from a story appearing today on Iran's call for a new global negotiating body, presumably to replace the United Nations Security Council:

Iran says the [nuclear] program is only for peaceful purposes, but Western powers believe it is trying to produce nuclear weapons.

Of course, it's not simply "Western powers" that believe this.  As reported in The New York Times last February, it's also the official position of the UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA):

The United Nations’ nuclear inspectors declared for the first time on Thursday that they had extensive evidence of “past or current undisclosed activities” by Iran’s military to develop a nuclear warhead, an unusually strongly worded conclusion that seems certain to accelerate Iran’s confrontation with the United States and other Western countries.

Reuters ran a similarly-worded story on the same day as the Times article but has since abandoned any mention of the IAEA findings in its coverage of the nuclear standoff.  Instead, we get the banal boilerplate seen in Robert Evans' story linked above.  This obfuscates both the evidence of, and near universal agreement that Iran is vigorously pursuing nuclear weapons.

The news agency that couldn't shoot straight (reprise)

Reuters correspondent Robin Pomeroy continues to get it wrong on the "working relationship" between Iran and Hamas.  In yet another example of lazy or duplicitous reporting, Pomeroy and Marwa Awad dip into Reuters barrel of broken boilerplate:

Israel accuses Iran of arming the Palestinian enclave's Islamist rulers, Hamas and is concerned Iran's uranium enrichment programme is aimed at making a nuclear bomb.

Tehran denies both charges, saying it offers only moral support to Hamas and that its nuclear programme is for peaceful purposes.

Here are the facts:

Iran has admitted funding Hamas -- to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars:

Since Hamas’ January 2006 electoral victory, funding has increased significantly. In April 2006, Iran pledged $50 million in aid to Hamas.[22] In November 2006, Iran donated $120 million to Hamas.[23] In December 2006, Iran pledged an additional $250 million to the terrorist organization.[24] In May 2008, Iran promised another $150 million to Hamas for the second half of 2008.[25]

And the objective evidence demonstrates that the Iranians have also supplied the terror group with armaments including Grad missiles:

In the past two-and-a-half years, dozens of Iranian-manufactured Grad rockets and mortar shells have been launched from Gaza at areas in Israel’s western Negev region and the city of Ashkelon.[29]

Time to move on to a less risible assertion, Reuters.

Reuters, the image-makers

Reuters is currently engaged in a heavy image-making effort to recast Hamas as something other than the jihadi terror group it clearly is.  There was another attack on a UNRWA summer camp in Gaza today by "masked Palestinian gunmen" and although reportedly, no group has claimed responsibility for the attack, Reuters recycles its broken boilerplate from previous stories to suggest the perpetrators were other than Hamasniks:

Fundamentalist Muslims, or Salafis -- whose agenda of global or holy war against the West conflicts with Hamas's nationalist goals -- have stepped up attacks in the Gaza Strip over the past several months, targeting Hamas security men and offices.

As we've noted in previous posts, Hamas "nationalist goals" are very much aligned with those of Islamic jihadists around the world.  An offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas makes its goals clear in Article Nine of its Charter:

Motives and Objectives
Hamas finds itself at a period of time when Islam has waned away from the reality of life. For this reason, the checks and balances have been upset, concepts have become confused, and values have been transformed; evil has prevailed, oppression and obscurity have reigned; cowards have turned tigers, homelands have been usurped, people have been uprooted and are wandering all over the globe. The state of truth has disappeared and was replaced by the state of evil. Nothing has remained in its right place, for when Islam is removed from the scene, everything changes. These are the motives. As to the objectives: discarding the evil, crushing it and defeating it, so that truth may prevail, homelands revert [to their owners], calls for prayer be heard from their mosques, announcing the reinstitution of the Muslim state. Thus, people and things will revert to their true place.

Thus, Hamas seeks not only the reconquest of the entire Mandate of Palestine (Israel), but also the return of all territories to their previous Muslim "owners", e.g., Moorish Spain.  Further, Hamas wants to see the reconstitution of a global Islamic state -- the Caliphate -- under Sharia law, precisely the mission of Osama bin Laden and the global jihadist movement:

Bin Laden himself spoke of ensuring that "the pious caliphate will start from Afghanistan." His chief deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, also dreamed of re-establishing the caliphate, for then, he wrote, "history would make a new turn, God willing, in the opposite direction against the empire of the United States and the world's Jewish government." Another Al-Qaeda leader, Fazlur Rehman Khalil, publishes a magazine that has declared "Due to the blessings of jihad, America's countdown has begun. It will declare defeat soon," to be followed by the creation of a caliphate.

It is simply hogwash to assert, as Reuters does, that Hamas has limited nationalist goals at odds with global holy war against the West.

More broken boilerplate

In a previous entry, we noted Reuters deliberately downplaying the casus belli and damage done to Israel by Hezbollah in the 2006 war.  In a story today about Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah threatening Israeli shipping, Reuters correspondent Mariam Karouny recycles the broken and biased boilerplate from Reuters earlier article:

Hezbollah fought against Israel in a 34-day war in 2006 after the group captured two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid. Some 1,200 people in Lebanon, mostly civilians, were killed and 160 Israelis, mostly soldiers, died.

Israel pounded Beirut's southern suburbs as well as mainly Shi'ite southern Lebanon where Hezbollah maintains a stronghold and from which Israel withdrew in 2000.

Israeli bombing also hit bridges, roads, airport runways, ports, factories, power and water networks, and military installations, and the eastern Bekaa Valley.

We'll paraphrase what we wrote in our previous post:

Reuters report of the war is heavily biased, describing the Israeli attacks in Lebanon in vivid detail while entirely omitting details of the start of the war and havoc in Israel caused by Hezbollah.  For example, Reuters fails to tell readers that:

1) Eight Israeli soldiers were killed by Hezbollah when the other two soldiers were kidnapped;

2) Hezbollah fired Katyusha rockets into Israeli border communities at the time of the initial attack;

3) Thousands of Israeli homes took direct hits by more than 4,000 rockets launched by Hezbollah during the war;

4) 300,000 Israelis were displaced;

5) More than one million Israelis were forced to live in bomb shelters for weeks.

Additionally, note Reuters' asymmetrical use of weasel words when describing Israelis as having "died" in the conflict while Lebanese were "killed".

For a bit of balance, this is what Israelis lived through:

They're ba-a-ack!

Well the holiday is over and correspondents from Reuters Middle East Bureau are back with more broken boilerplate.  In a story on a clash between the Israel Defense Forces and Palestinian Islamic Jihad on the Gaza border, Reuters reporter Nidal al-Mughrabi embeds language that has been similarly seeded within literally hundreds of Reuters stories over the last 15 months:

Hamas has largely held its fire since a costly three-week war with Israel in the opening days of 2009 in which some 1,400 Palestinians, mainly civilians, and 13 Israelis, mostly soldiers, were killed.

The casualty figures provided are actually disputed, drawn from a war fought over a year ago, and largely irrelevant to al-Mughrabi's story.  Yet Reuters cunningly employs the propaganda technique of repetition to sear the numbers and corresponding allusion to Israeli wantonness into the subconscious of its readers.

Reuters recycles broken boilerplate, tired canards

Dan Williams of Reuters picks up on an interview published by Maariv with Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman where the latter notes that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas had supported Israeli efforts to defeat Hamas in the Gaza war last year:

Over the past year, I witnessed (Abbas) at his best. In Operation Cast Lead, (he) called us personally, applied pressure and demanded that we topple Hamas and remove it from power," he told Israel's Maariv daily.

We have noted the same in previous posts citing an article which originally appeared in Time Magazine in February of 2009.  Thus, there is really nothing new in the recognition or report that Abbas sided with, and likely provided strategic support to, the Israelis in their battle against Hamas.

Williams constructs his story with a slew of tired canards and what we refer to as "broken boilerplate", that is material drawn from Reuters capacious word processing files on the Middle East conflict which is fundamentally flawed or biased.  For example, Williams writes:

Israel launched its three-week Gaza offensive on Dec. 27, 2008 with the stated aim of stopping rocket attacks by Hamas and other Palestinian factions. Such attacks have tapered off since, though there has been sporadic cross-border violence.

The Israeli effort to put an end to over 8,000 rocket and mortar attacks from Hamas-controlled Gaza over many years is habitually characterized by Reuters as an "offensive" so as to portray Israel as the aggressor and reader skepticism of Israeli motives is further encouraged by cynically referring to the "stated aim" of the military operation.  Williams also suggests that the rocket attacks have "tapered off" with only "sporadic" violence since the war but as we have noted previously, there have actually been several hundred rocket and mortar attacks aimed at Israeli communities over the last year including one that killed a greenhouse worker just 10 days ago.

Williams repeats another popular Reuters canard:

The war's Palestinian toll -- 1,400 dead, mostly non-combatants, while Israel lost 10 troops and three civilians -- drew fierce censure abroad and stalled negotiations between Abbas and then Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, a centrist.

As we've noted each time Reuters publishes this rubbish, negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority actually went into hibernation months prior to the war following Abbas' refusal of Olmert's extraordinary peace offer, the Quartet's rejection of Abbas' demand for a Palestinian state on the 1949 Armistice Lines with its capital in Jerusalem, and imminent elections in Israel.

Finally, Williams blames Israel for the latest Palestinian obduracy:

Hopes of starting indirect talks between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Abbas were dashed this month by the announcement of a new Jewish settlement project on occupied land where Palestinians seek a state. The project, slated for an area of the West Bank that Israel annexed to Jerusalem, also drew U.S. questions about Netanyahu's seriousness about peacemaking. That dispute remains unresolved.

The Palestinians of course, had agreed to enter into so-called proximity talks -- even after Israel had indicated that building would continue in and around Jerusalem -- and then reneged on their commitment following the Obama administration's public turnabout on the issue.  For Reuters however, the Palestinians are never accountable for their own actions.

More Reuters errata and broken boilerplate

In a story about the Arab League agreeing to support "indirect" negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs, Reuters digs into the broken boilerplate bin and comes up with:

[PA President] Abbas broke off talks with Israel to protest its offensive in Gaza launched in December 2008.

No.  As we have documented numerous times, negotiations had effectively ended months prior to the war in Gaza when Abbas refused then Israeli PM Ehud Olmert's offer of 97% of the "West Bank" (also, Judea and Samaria) for a comprehensive peace settlement; when the Palestinian Arabs were unable to coerce the Quartet to stipulate that a Palestinian state be set up on the 1949 Armistice Lines with Jerusalem as their capital; and due to imminent elections in Israel.  Abbas supported Israel's efforts in Gaza to rid the strip of Hamas:

At the start of Israel's offensive, one of Abbas' top aides said Hamas was "110 per cent" to blame for the Gaza attack — an unpopular, if not suicidal, stance among Palestinians, whose ire was directed at Israel. Even as the civilian death toll climbed, Abbas delayed several days before criticizing the Israeli offensive. In the West Bank, which Abbas controls by dint of the presence of the Israeli army, his security forces cracked down brutally on fellow Palestinians protesting the Israeli offensive. Palestinians ask why Abbas did not go to Gaza during the fighting to show solidarity with its residents, or organize blood or food help for Gaza's victims.

Reuters continues with more false assertions:

He [Abbas] has resisted U.S. and Israeli calls for a resumption of direct negotiations, saying Israel must first halt all Jewish settlement building on occupied lands where the Palestinians aim to establish a state.

No.  Abbas has insisted that Israel halt building on all land outside of the 1949 Armistice Lines including land which is and has been legally owned by Jews going back over eighty years.

More broken boilerplate

Another day, another unarmed African migrant killed by Egyptian police while trying to cross the Sinai border with Israel.  And you know what that means... boilerplate apologetics from Reuters on behalf of Egypt and the insinuation that Israel is to blame for trigger-happy border police:

The man was shot in the stomach and leg on Saturday night by guards stationed on the border. He had refused orders to stop while attempting to cross barbed wire marking the sensitive frontier, the source said... The Sinai border is a major transit route for African migrants and refugees seeking work or asylum in Israel. Egypt has come under pressure from Israel to staunch the flow, while rights groups complain about the methods of the border police... Security forces say they only fire at migrants after repeated orders to stop are disregarded and that smugglers who ferry migrants to the border sometimes fire on security forces.

One can only imagine Reuters offering the same journalistic cover to Israeli security forces operating on the border with Gaza when armed Palestinian terrorists attempt to infiltrate.  Actually, we can't even imagine it.

More broken boilerplate

Residing somewhere on the Reuters Middle East server, lies a word processing file saved as anti-Israelpropaganda.docx -- or so we imagine.  It's the only way to explain the pernicious boilerplate appearing in scores of Reuters' stories, like for example, this:     

Ideological divides run deep in Israel, especially over the future of some 500,000 Jews who live among 2.7 million Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, areas captured in a 1967 war which Palestinians want for a viable future state.

Now, we understand the value of boilerplate for a writer under pressure to meet a daily deadline.  We just think Reuters ought to inspect the veracity of that boilerplate before repeating it and selling it on to hundreds of other news publications.  For the reality is, a large majority of Israelis support settlement construction in the disputed territories and two-thirds either oppose any evacuation of Jewish settlements in a final peace deal or say only a small number of communities should be dismantled.  Moreover, 85 percent of Israelis oppose dividing Jerusalem in exchange for peace with the Palestinians.

Not much of an "ideological divide" there.

Reuters blames Israel for Islamic terrorism on all fronts

Reuters publishes op-eds which -- though this is difficult to believe -- are more heavily biased and laden with propaganda than their usual "news" stories.  The media giant labels these op-eds "Analysis" so when you see that word emblazoned at the top of Reuters' webpage, it's generally advisable to prepare for the most extreme examples of one-sided claptrap a writer can possibly dream up.

Alistair Lyon, whose recent stories we have commented on here, here, and here now shifts his propaganda machine to Jordan where he leads with:

Jordanians share Palestinian despondency on peace

Ah yes, everyone is despondent that there is no peace in the Middle East except it seems, the Israelis.  (We cannot recall the last time Reuters did a story where they interviewed ordinary run-of-the-mill Israelis in Tel Aviv or Haifa about their aspirations for the region.  Must be challenging for one of Reuters' 100+ correspondents in the area to get to the coast).

Lyon runs through the litany of standard Reuters boilerplate banalities to portray that Arab "despondency".  There's despair:

Outside the West Bank and Gaza Strip, despair at the failure of years of U.S.-led Middle East peacemaking...

And feelings of futility:

Even those who once backed the "peace process" now view it as futile.

And of course, the ubiquitous Arab humiliation:

President Barack Obama's failure to secure his own demand that Israel stop building settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem is seen here as a humiliating sign...

And desperation:

Jordanian politicians acknowledge that such a move is likely to be doomed to failure but sympathise with the desperation...

And according to Nawaf Tell, a Foreign Ministry official heading the Center for Strategic Studies at the University of Jordan:

"The frustration, the disappointment, was biggest with Jordan."

Well of course it was, since Jordan sits on land representing 78% of the original Palestine Mandate and has a population which is 60-70% Palestinian Arab.  You can bet that Jordanian government officials, who clearly do not want more Palestinians in their 89,000 square kilometers of territory (Israel possesses 22,000 sq km), will be disappointed in any outcome that prevents them from expelling the Palestinian Arabs that currently reside in the country.

And since:

"The Palestinians are cornered," said Taher al-Masri, a former Jordanian prime minister of Palestinian origin...

And according to Reuters' Lyon:

Israel has no interest in trading land for peace, only in endless negotiations that will buy it more time to tighten its grip on East Jerusalem and the West Bank...

There must also be the perennial Arab threat of violence:

"But with this Israeli government it is difficult. It is the perfect recipe for violence and deadlock in the peace process."

And the completely unsupported assertion that:

Perceived injustice to the Palestinians also fuels Islamic militancy as far away as Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Because after all, there is just so much evidence that the Pashtuns in Afghanistan fighting to overthrow the Karzai government are doing so on behalf of the Palestinian Arabs.

And finally, the utterly absurd conclusion:

"Every Arab leader has been telling the world, start with the Palestinian question and even terrorism can be contained."

Since it is common knowledge that Islamic jihad only dates back to 1967 when Israel recovered the territories from Jordan.

Anatomy of a lie

Reuters' correspondents like Jeffrey Heller have been writing on the Middle East conflict for years.  Their technique and boilerplate have been honed to perpetuate particular myths that form a part of the Reuters' advocacy agenda consistent with the Arab agenda.  Take for example, the following logical fallacy: 

1) Jerusalem is part of the "West Bank".
2) The West Bank is "occupied" land.
3) "Occupied" land is synonymous with Palestinian land.
Therefore,
4) Jerusalem is occupied Palestinian land.

This fallacy is a form of begging the question/circular reasoning where the conclusion, while following logically, is based on faulty premises intended to lead inexorably to the conclusion (implicitly embedded in the premises) which the writer wishes the reader to reach.

Here is how Heller constructs his logical fallacy in a story appearing on the Reuters website today.  He begins by telling us that Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu intends to announce a formal plan to limit settlement construction for 10 months:

Netanyahu's offer will exclude areas of the West Bank that Israel annexed to its Jerusalem municipality after capturing the territory in a 1967 war, the sources said.

Note how Heller slyly slips in his first faulty premise, i.e., areas annexed to Jerusalem constitute a part of the West Bank.  In fact, Jewish communities formally annexed by Israel, like Gilo for example, are geographically adjacent to the western part of Jerusalem and sit atop land purchased by Jews prior to WWII.  Indeed, this land was owned by Jews even before the Jordanians labeled the area the "West Bank" following their invasion and ethnic cleansing of Jewish communities in 1948.

Heller then proceeds with his second faulty premise, i.e., the West Bank is occupied land:

That would fall short of a Palestinian demand that Netanyahu freeze settlement on all occupied land before peace negotiations, suspended since December, can resume.

As we noted here, the term "occupied" is drawn from the Fourth Geneva Convention which applies only to land formerly part of a sovereign state and contracting party to the Conventions -- neither of which pertains to the West Bank.

The third faulty premise, i.e., "occupied" land is synonymous with Palestinian land, is introduced in the form of a quote by PA President Mahmoud Abbas, cited by Heller fully and uncritically:

We do not believe we can restart the negotiations with them [Israel] while they are continuing building in our territories, Abbas said. [italics, ours]

Note the absence of scare quotes -- frequently employed by Reuters correspondents to express their skepticism or disdain for Israeli positions -- around Abbas' assertion of the territories as Palestinian.  In other words, Reuters plainly accepts Abbas' assertion that the territories belong to the Palestinian Arabs.  In reality, as per international law, the territories remain formally unallocated.

Having guilefully embedded three false premises, Heller leads the reader to the only "logical" conclusion: Jerusalem is occupied Palestinian land.  If there were any doubt, Heller pastes in a bit of standard Reuters' boilerplate:

Some 500,000 Jews live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem alongside 2.7 million Palestinians. The settlements, Palestinians fear, could deny them a viable state.

Mission accomplished, Jeffrey.

More broken boilerplate

In a post on October 23, we noted how Reuters' Alistair Lyon paints Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu as intemperate and intransigent in his negotiating position while the Palestinian position is presented as rational and reasonable. That view is obviously so entrenched at Reuters, they decide to recycle it today:

Netanyahu has, with evident distaste, bowed to U.S. pressure to talk of negotiating the creation of a Palestinian state, but only if it is demilitarized and if Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state.

Here's a video of Netanyahu speaking at Bar Ilan University on June 14, 2009 where he called for a Palestinian state (begin 8:27):



The spitting and nausea is obvious, yes?

Now compare with PA President Mahmoud Abbas speaking to the Palestinian Youth Parliament on April 27, 2009:



Cool and conciliatory, yes?

Reuters' broken boilerplate

Peruse almost any Reuters article on the Middle East conflict where the Road Map peace plan is discussed -- like here, here, and here -- and you will find virtually the same boilerplate used to describe the responsibilities of the Israelis and Palestinians, respectively. Per Reuters, Israel is required to definitively "end all settlement activity" while the Palestinians are merely asked to "crack down on militants" or "rein in attacks". Let's see how well this represents the reality as specified in the Road Map.

Dusting off a copy of the 2003 plan, we read in the overture:

As a performance-based plan, progress will require and depend upon the good faith efforts of the parties, and their compliance with each of the obligations outlined below.

Taking a look at what is required of the parties in the first phase of the plan:

GOI [Government of Israel] immediately dismantles settlement outposts erected since March 2001. Consistent with the Mitchell Report, GOI freezes all settlement activity (including natural growth of settlements).

Fair enough; Reuters seems to capture the Israeli commitment with a reasonable degree of accuracy. Although to be precise, Israel is actually only required to "freeze" not "end" all settlement activity. Now, let's compare the Reuters' translation of Palestinian commitments above with their actual obligations as stipulated in the Road Map:

Rebuilt and refocused Palestinian Authority security apparatus begins sustained, targeted, and effective operations aimed at confronting all those engaged in terror and dismantlement of terrorist capabilities and infrastructure. This includes commencing confiscation of illegal weapons and consolidation of security authority, free of association with terror and corruption.

Hmm, "rein in attacks" in Reuters' parlance doesn't exactly equate to "dismantlement of terrorist capabilities and infrastructure". In fact, it's not even in the ballpark. As for confiscation of illegal weapons, or a security authority free of association with terror and corruption, well, Reuters is silent on these Palestinian commitments.

By repeatedly misrepresenting Palestinian obligations in each of its relevant articles, Reuters is clearly engaged in an effort to drum into the minds of its readers a false understanding of the facts and diminish public expectations of Palestinian performance while holding Israel to a strict, and much higher, standard.