resistance and the joint security efforts to curb its activities. Although Fatah leaders questioned the credibility of the documents, claiming the leak primarily serves Israel’s interests, Al Jazeera’s reporting on the se- cret talks between the two parties laid the ground for the emergence of a different narrative on that period of the Palestinian cause. The reason behind choosing these two cases of Al Jazeera’s cov- erage of the Palestinian cause is to clarify the role the channel played in shaping a new Arab awareness by presenting accurate information to the audience no matter how serious or shocking it may be. The launch of Al Jazeera Mubasher in 2005 only increased Al Jazeera’s role in that respect, especially with its live coverage of news and events without any editorial interference. In 2006, the launch of Al Jazeera English was another leap for the Network as it provided a new window to address the English-speaking audience at a global level, focusing primarily on what Al Jazeera calls the ‘global South’. Al Jazeera’s impact on the political scene was addressed by Abdel- haq Yahiaoui’s study “Al Jazeera news bulletins and political awareness of the Arab Israeli conflict”. In it, Yaiyaoui clarifies statistically and in detail the equation of knowledge and shaping. Based on field research, he investigated the link between watching Al Jazeera and developing political awareness among secondary school teachers. The study found an organic connection does exist between watching Al Jazeera news bulletins and the development of levels of political awareness of the Arab-Israeli conflict (1) . Although the study was conducted in Algeria, the researcher argued that his findings would apply equally to any sam- ple of the Arab audience in any other country. The importance of the Algerian findings reflects Al Jazeera’s influence on viewers from the Maghrib region regarding this conflict, despite their distant location from Palestine. This study is also important since it considered politi- cal awareness as ‘a knowledge-based and emotional stance that forms a part of the social awareness through which self-realisation becomes attainable in terms of relations with others (2) . In addition, the study con- (1) Abdehaq Yahiaoui, Al Jazeera News Bulletins and Political Awareness of the Arab-Israeli Conflict: a study featuring a sample of the second-stage teachers in Djelfa , Algeria, (Kasdi Merbah University - Ouargla, 2010).
(2) Ibid, pp. 59-60.
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