URL: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2091317,00.html
Palestine plans to appeal to the United Nations for an upgrade from its current status. Having long fought over land with its Israeli neighbor, Palestine continues to seek a way to become its own independent state. It can appeal to the UN in two ways: request full UN membership and most likely be rejected by the US, which is part of the Security Council that reviews the applications, or request for a promotion from the position of "observer entity" to "observer state." Such approach would not require the approval of the US, and would allow Palestine to appeal to the International Criminal Court to charge Israel with humans rights crimes.
This article is from TIME, a renown and internationally acknowledged news source. The author of this article, Karl Vick, is Time's bureau chief in Jerusalem. In 2001, he was among the Washington Post finalists for the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service.
To get the gist of this article, it is necessary to understand the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict that has gone on for 70 years. The background of the two nations is essential to understanding why Palestine strives to be an independent state.
The purpose is to simply update readers on the conflict status. It is mostly facts and quotes. It helps readers get a better idea of the situation by explaining what Palestine's options are.
The audience would be politicians and those interested in politics. It is a relatively neutral article so the audience is not especially restricted.
Rhetorical elements exemplified in this article would be dialogue and logos.
Since the author wrote for mostly informational purposes, I'd say he was relatively successful. However, I would have preferred more specific details and a personal opinion. That would have spawned more thought among his readers.
It was interesting to read your response to reading your article, particularly because I remember learning of this conflict in History class two years ago. Although my knowledge and memory are hazy, I get the general gist of what is being discussed. You touched upon this by saying that one can only truly understand this article with prior understandings of what is going on between these two internal states. I agree with your input of adding more personal opinion in the article would have made readers think of the situation in different views. It seems that by promoting their position from observer entity to observer state bypasses the power of US to intervene. I felt like it was a loophole for the Palestinians. This article seems very appropriate for our first AOW, nice job!
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