"Few readers of a British newspaper would have noticed the story. In the Observer of 25 June, it merited a mere paragraph hidden in the �World in brief� section, revealing that the previous day a team of Israeli commandos had entered the Gaza Strip to �detain� two Palestinians Israel claims are members of Hamas.
The significance of the mission was alluded to in a final phrase describing this as �the first arrest raid in the territory since Israel pulled out of the area a year ago�. More precisely, it was the first time the Israeli army had re-entered the Gaza Strip, directly violating Palestinian control of the territory, since it supposedly left in August last year.
As the Observer landed on doorsteps around the UK, however, another daring mission was being launched in Gaza that would attract far more attention from the British media � and prompt far more concern.
Shortly before dawn, armed Palestinians slipped past Israeli military defences to launch an attack on an army post close by Gaza called Kerem Shalom. They sneaked through a half-mile underground tunnel dug under an Israeli-built electronic fence that surrounds the Strip and threw grenades at a tank, killing two soldiers inside. Seizing another, wounded soldier the gunmen then disappeared back into Gaza.
Whereas the Israeli �arrest raid� had passed with barely a murmur, the Palestinian attack a day later received very different coverage. The BBC�s correspondent in Gaza, Alan Johnstone, started the ball rolling later the same day in broadcasts in which he referred to the Palestinian attack as �a major escalation in cross-border tensions�. (BBC World news, 10am GMT, 25 June 2006)
Johnstone did not explain why the Palestinian attack on an Israeli army post was an escalation, while the Israeli raid into Gaza the previous day was not. Both were similar actions: violations of a neighbour�s territory.
The Palestinians could justify attacking the military post because the Israeli army has been using it and other fortified positions to fire hundreds of shells into Gaza that have contributed to some 30 civilian deaths over the preceding weeks. Israel could justify launching its mission into Gaza because it blames the two men it seized for being behind some of the hundreds of home-made Qassam rockets that have been fired out of Gaza, mostly ineffectually, but occasionally harming Israeli civilians in the border town of Sderot.
So why was the Palestinian attack, and not the earlier Israeli raid, an escalation? The clue came in the same report from Johnstone, in which he warned that Israel would feel compelled to launch �retaliations� for the attack, implying that a re-invasion of the Gaza Strip was all but inevitable.
So, in fact, the �escalation� and �retaliation� were one and the same thing. Although Johnstone kept repeating that the Palestinian attack had created an escalation, what he actually meant was that Israel was choosing to escalate its response. Both sides could continue their rocket fire, but only Israel was in a position to reinvade with tanks and ground forces.
There was another intriguing aspect to Johnstone�s framework for interpreting these fast-moving events, one that would be adopted by all the British media. He noted that the coming Israeli �retaliation� -- the reinvasion -- had a specific cause: the escalation prompted by the brief Palestinian attack that left two Israeli soldiers dead and a third captured.
But what about the Palestinian attack: did it not have a cause too? According to the British media, apparently not. Apart from making vague references to the Israeli artillery bombardment of the Gaza Strip over the previous weeks, Johnstone and other reporters offered no context for the Palestinian attack. It had no obvious cause or explanation. It appeared to come out of nowhere, born presumably only of Palestinian malice.
Or as a Guardian editorial phrased it: �Confusion surrounds the precise motives of the gunmen from the Islamist group Hamas and two other armed organisations who captured the Israeli corporal and killed two other soldiers on Sunday. But it was clearly intended to provoke a reaction, as is the firing of rockets from Gaza into Israel.� ('Storm over Gaza,' 29 June 2006)
It was not as though Johnstone or the Guardian had far to look for reasons for the Palestinian attack, explanations that might frame it as a retaliation no different from the Israeli one. In addition to the shelling that has caused some 30 civilian deaths and inflicted yet more trauma on a generation of Palestinian children, Israel has been blockading Gaza�s borders to prevent food and medicines from reaching the population and it has successfully pressured international donors to cut off desperately needed funds to the Palestinian government. Then, of course, there was also the matter of the Israeli army�s violation of Palestinian-controlled territory in Gaza the day before.
None of this context surfaced to help audiences distinguish cause and effect, and assess for themselves who was doing the escalating and who the retaliating.
That may have been because all of these explanations make sense only in the context of Israel�s continuing occupation of Gaza. But that context conflicts with a guiding assumption in the British media: that the occupation finished with Israel�s disengagement from Gaza in August last year. With the occupation over, all grounds for Palestinian �retaliation� become redundant.
The Guardian�s diplomatic editor, Ewen MacAskill certainly took the view that Israel should be able to expect quiet after its disengagement. �Having pulled out of Gaza last year, the Israelis would have been justified in thinking they might enjoy a bit of peace on their southern border.� ('An understandable over-reaction,' Comment is Free, 28 June 2006)
Never mind that Gaza�s borders, airspace, electromagnetic frequencies, electricity and water are all under continuing Israeli control, or that the Palestinians are not allowed an army, or that Israel is still preventing Gazans from having any contact with Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Meetings of the Palestinian parliament have to be conducted over video links because Israel will not allow MPs in Gaza to travel to Ramallah in the West Bank.
These factors might have helped to explain continuing Palestinian anger, but in British coverage of the conflict they appear to be unmentionables."