Covering the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Al Jazeera English and BBC’s Online Reporting on the 2023 Gaza War

The Hamas surprise attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, and the Israeli military response unleashed a catastrophic episode of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and exacerbated broader tensions in the region. This study compares Al Jazeera English (AJE) and BBC’s coverage of and discourse around key events in the early stages of the 2023 Israel–Gaza War. Using critical discourse analysis as an analytical framework, this study employs mixed methods to compare transitivity, intertextuality, and lexicalization as key discursive features in the two outlets’ coverage of the war. Counter to previous qualitative works, this study quantitatively reveals no variation between AJE and BBC’s use of active voice yet points to key qualitative differences in the discursive treatment of Palestinians and the reporting on death tolls. It further demonstrates drastic differences in the quoting patterns and negative lexicalization of the early phases of the war, with AJE taking a more balanced approach and BBC refraining from emphasizing accusations against Israel of committing “genocide”, “ethnic cleansing”, “terrorism”, and “war crimes”. The study concludes with a discussion of the implications of differential discourses around the Gaza War and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict in international media.