Despite the widespread use of blogging in the Arab world, the blogging has not found its natural place among Internet users, writers and journalists in the Palestinian territories. And that’s even despite the urgent need for it because of the misfortune and plight the Palestinians endure, which needs confrontation, uncovering the mystery and telling the suffering to an international audience to bring more support and sympathy for the most controversial issue in the world.
This is what has came out of the seminar, entitled Blogs, The new revolution, that was organized by El Thoraya for information and communications organization, in el Salam Hall, Gaza beach, and attended by a gathering of Palestinian journalists and bloggers.

Speaking about blogging and its history, Feda’a el Madhoun, the manager of the organization and Al Jazeera Talk correspondent, said: “The American war on Iraq was the main reason behind the popularity of blogging and its take off in the world, where American soldiers became on-the-field militarily correspondents, accurately conveying details of the battle on the Internet.”
El Madhoun further explained that despite the prosecuting campaigns against bloggers and arresting a few of them in Arab countries like Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Bahrain, bloggers continued on their path towards revealing the truth and expressing the worries of the simple Arab citizen, impacting Arab public opinion through what is written and blogged on the Internet.
Meanwhile, Mohsen El Efrangi, the lecturer at the Islamic university in Gaza, emphasised the need for Palestinian people to blog, addressing the present situation of blogging in Palestine . He said: “Blogging in the Palestinian territories didn’t mature yet, and it’s still beyond comparison with some Arab countries. As there are only two Palestinian websites working as part of the blogging crowd, where visitors can create their blogs, and these are El Ameen Information Network and the Palestinian Cultural Foundation.”
And El Efrngi pointed out that English blogging is more necessary than blogging in Arabic, to correct the West’s prior beliefs and convictions towards the conflict in the region and to transfer a vivid and realistic picture of the Palestinian misery to the West, which only gets its information from CNN, Fox news and the BBC. At the same time, he invited Palestinian youth to blog in English and expose the Israeli practices against the Palestinian people.
Ibrahim Omar, an Al Jazeera Talk correspondent in the Gaza Strip, introduced Al Jazeera Talk and its contribution to the blogging world, praising its role in establishing the Blogging without Borders Federation and acquiring the title of the first Arab blog among five other pioneering blogs in the world. Omar said that the number of Palestinian visitors to the Al Jazeera Talk blog comes in second place after Egypt. And he added that blog correspondents wrote coverages for few events and excellent reports that became a major source for newspapers and internet websites in the Arab world.

On the other side of the equation, journalist Mofeed Abu Shamala, from Ramatan News Agency, said there is no need for blogging in the presence of newspapers and news sites on the Internet. He added: “If we consider that there is a blog for each online guest, all bloggers will become journalists and therefore there will be no one to read what’s written on the Internet.”
Meanwhile, Khaled Safi, a broadcaster in Voice of El Aqsa, said that for bloggers, the main aim behind the creation of blogs is no more than material profit and fame, adding that the content and subjects dealt with in blogs do not rise up to the standard to be read by Internet users. For his part, Baha’y Sharab said there is a pressing need for blogs for Palestinians in the light of what they experience daily, and he called for developing the performance of bloggers and to promote their work under a common umbrella, such as creating a Palestinian Bloggers’ Union.
At the end of the seminar, the speakers stressed the importance of blogging for the Palestinian people, under their current circumstances, and invited journalists to create their own blogs and to keep abreast of developments in information technology and world of technology.