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According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), the
West Bank is the world’s “worst place to be a journalist”.
The West Bank ranked ahead of other dangerous locations,
including Afghanistan, Burma, Colombia, and Zimbabwe. CPJ’s
finding is not surprising. Since the start of the al-Asqa
intifada, Israeli occupation forces have increasingly
isolated the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) to
conceal violations of international humanitarian law by
abusing international journalists working in Israel and the
OPT, who have special status under international law. Since
the beginning of the intifada in September 2000, Israeli
authorities have been responsible for over 400 cases of
harassment and attacks on journalists.
Israeli forces have either deliberately singled out
journalists for harassment and intimidation, or injured
media personnel in their disproportionate use of force in
responding to the intifada. Neither action is justifiable
under international law. |
Foreign
journalist wounded in November 2000
Photo: PCHR Field worker |
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The Israeli government’s harassment of independent media
coverage has taken several forms: Violence against
Palestinian and international journalists; interference in
confiscation of news material; harassment and intimidation
of journalists; and arbitrary closure of news organizations
and independent media outlets. In their abuse of personnel,
Israeli authorities have threatened, interrogated, detained,
beaten, fired at, and shot journalists and other media
personnel. They have also shelled and destroyed media
institutions, confiscated press equipment and press cards,
and occupied foreign media offices. According to PCHR data,
between March 31, 2002 and June 30, 2002, Israeli
authorities wounded over a dozen journalists, detained over
70 journalists, and shelled over ten media institutions.
While some media institutions, according to the
International Federation of Journalism (IFJ), have “tested
the limits” of objective journalism, that in no way
justifies both deliberate and indiscriminate violence and
intimidation of any media institutions and their personnel.
A particularly egregious violation took place in December
2001, when the Government Press Office (GPO) of Israel
adopted a new accreditation procedure to refuse renewal of
press cards of Palestinians who work as assistants in
foreign networks. The GPO issued these Palestinians orange
cards designating them as foreign-journalist escorts; the
cards will only be valid for occupied territories. The IFJ
has condemned the action as victimization of Palestinian
journalists. According to Aidan White, General Secretary of
the International Federation of Journalists, “it is a
spiteful act of discrimination.”
The cumulative effect of all these actions goes beyond the
physical damage to media personnel and institutions and the
undermining of international humanitarian law. Such actions
have also exacerbated a climate of ignorance and fear
through censoring information on the conflict, making
objective reporting and simple news transmission more
difficult. The organization Reporters Sans Frontieres
(Reporters Without Borders) has condemned Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon and former Israeli army chief-of-staff Shaul
Moffaz as predators of press freedom. As IFJ General
Secretary Aidan White remarked, “People who speak of
democracy and then impose censorship to avoid public
scrutiny make a mockery of the language of peace and human
rights.”
The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights has collected links
on the subject “Abuse of the Free Press” to give concerned
visitors a sense of the Israeli authorities’ treatment of
media personnel and institutions.
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