Michael Jansen: Five Decades Reporting the Middle East

Few Western journalists have covered the modern Middle East for as long as Michael Jansen. American by birth, she has lived and worked in the region since the 1960s. She has reported on almost every major conflict between the June 1967 war and the upheavals of the past decade.

A correspondent's career

Jansen is best known to many readers through her long association with *The Irish Times*, for which she has reported from Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Palestine, Israel, Jordan, Egypt and Cyprus. Her columns and analyses have also appeared regularly in the *Jordan Times* and in Gulf newspapers, including *Gulf Today*. That has made her a familiar byline for English-speaking readers across the Arab world.

Her reporting is marked by close attention to civilians and to history. She tends to explain events through the long arc of the region's politics: colonial borders, the Arab-Israeli wars, Cold War rivalries and the decisions of outside powers.

Books

Jansen has also written books drawing on her reporting, including:

• *The Battle of Beirut: Why Israel Invaded Lebanon* (1982), written in the immediate aftermath of the Israeli invasion and siege of the city.
• *Dissonance in Zion*, an early critical examination of Israeli politics and policy.

A distinctive vantage point

Much of Western coverage of the Middle East has been written by correspondents rotating through for a few years at a time. Jansen's perspective is that of a long-term resident who watched the same questions return decade after decade. Occupation, refugees, sectarian politics and foreign intervention run through her work.

Her journalism is valued by readers who want context as much as news. It is especially valued by those trying to understand how the crises of today grew out of the choices of the past half-century.