17-3-2010
Bethlehem - The Palestinian Center for Development and Media Freedoms (MADA) on Tuesday strongly condemned what it termed Israeli attacks against a group of journalists in the West Bank and Jerusalem in recent days.

In a statement, MADA stressed the need for Palestinian journalists to exercise their right to free expression and coverage, and called on the international community and human rights organizations to intervene.

Police prevented journalists from covering clashes in the town of Al-Esawiya, near Jerusalem, on Tuesday and used force against Palestine TV cameraman Nader Pabers and Pal Media cameraman Hamza Naaji the same day, MADA said.

The group also alleged that Israeli forces detained the Palestine TV crew (correspondent Haroon Amayreh, cameramen Samer Habash and Najib Sharoneh) at the Atarah checkpoint near Birzeit on Tuesday.

According to photographer Mahfouz Abu Turk of the AP, Israeli forces prevented all journalists and photographers from covering the confrontations in Al-Esawiya, where a group of press crews from Al-Jazeera, Al-Arabiya, CNN, and others attempted to film. They were prevented from filming, MADA said, while the Israeli army ordered them to stay away from the area, Abu Turk said.

Pabers said that he and a colleague were injured by tear gas shortly after arriving at the Al-Asbat Gate area in Jerusalem on Monday to film clashes between Palestinians and Israeli police. Cameraman Hamza Naaji was also injured, he said.

"If you get hurt, we are not responsible," Papers quoted an approaching police officer as saying.

In the West Bank, Amayreh said he was detained for an hour and a half at the Atarah checkpoint near Birzeit, where he had arrived to cover protests led by university students. Israeli forces ordered a group of journalists to leave the area, Amayreh said.

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18-3-2010
Riots took place all over East Jerusalem this week in protest of settlers threatening to force their way into the Al Aqsa Mosque. As a result, Israeli security forces shut down major areas of the Old City, including the mosque compound to Muslim men under 50.

The Real News' Lia Tarachansky spoke to Toufic Haddad, journalist and author of Between the Lines: Israel the Palestinians, and the U.S. "war on terror" about the real reason for these protests. Haddad explains that Israeli colonization over East Jerusalem led to home demolitions, confiscations, and the flourishing of settlements all over the Palestinian Territories.

Because these protests are supported by the government, Palestinian protests are systemically repressed, leading to mass arrests, injuries, and sometimes death. Alternative tactics, such as undercover police often lead to the tensions which are expected to rise as the Jerusalem Municipal Police approved another right-wing settler protest for Sunday through the Palestinian East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan.

Bio

Toufic Haddad is a Palestinian-American writer based in Jerusalem. He is the co-author and editor of Between the Lines: Readings in Israel, the Palestinians and the U.S ’War on Terror’. His writings on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have been featured in Monthly Review Zine, Znet, Counterpunch, the International Socialist Review, and the Journal of Palestine Studies. He has also been translated into French, Spanish, German, Norwegian, Dutch, Hebrew and Arabic.

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