Between The Secular And The National: Representations Of Jerusalem In The Media Coverage Of FATAH-affiliated Palestine Satellite Channel

The holly city of Jerusalem is a crucial element that cannot be ignored in the components of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict over the land. Jerusalem is considered the reason for revolutions and uprisings for the Palestinians to end the occupation of their land. Despite this importance, it suffered from a change in the concepts and presence in the agenda of the main Palestinian faction, particularly Fatah. This study uses the agenda-setting theory to examine the political agenda of Fatah through analyzing the news coverage and media discourse of Palestine Satellite Channel. The study is qualitative in nature, as it employed the content analysis method to reach the desired results. The results indicated that the news coverage and highlights of AlQuds/Jerusalem totally stem from the agenda of Fatah. When the faction dropped its armed resistance dogma and adopted the new agenda of negotiations with Israel, the discourse of the faction has changed completely. The results revealed that the basic concept of Jerusalem has become more acceptor of having one capital for two states, which contradicts with the basic beliefs of the Palestinian people. Also, the results showed that the channel emphasized on highlighting secular and nationalistic concepts of the city rather than religious.