Research Project

Palestinians have been suffering under Israeli occupation since the creation of the Zionist state in 1948. Despite their suffrage, the Palestinian people have been resisting occupation. There have been two distinct mass resistance movements among Palestinians, known as the first and second intifadas, meaning “uprising,” in Arabic. The first intifada of the late 1980s and the second intifada of the early 21st century were both extensively covered across a variety of media outlets. Foreign media predominantly covered the first intifada while the second intifada was covered by both foreign media and Arabic media, specifically Al-Jazeera. In fact, Western sympathy during the first intifada was present, but diminished during the second intifada with the emergence of Al-Jazeera. This paper aims to explore the shift in public sympathy in the West from the first to second intifada by conducting a comparative analysis of foreign media versus Al-Jazeera through qualitative research methods. These methods include examining television news footage, news articles, and documentaries during the periods of the first and second uprisings from major foreign news outlets, such as CNN, ABC, CBS, and NBC, and Al-Jazeera. The results and conclusions are not finalized as this research is still ongoing, but research currently suggests that the disparity in Western public sympathy represents a clash of civilizations phenomenon between Western media and Arabic media.