His Excellency Ehud Barak
Prime Minister
Kiryat Ben-Gurion
3 Kaplan St, P.O. Box 187
91919 Jerusalem
Israel
By Fax: 2 (00972-2) 513 950
Vienna, 2 November, 2000
Your Excellency
The International Press Institute (IPI), the global network of editors and media executives, strongly condemns the Israeli government’s decision to stop issuing permits for Palestinian journalists to enter Israeli areas or leave the Palestinian areas.
According to our sources, the Israeli Defence Ministry yesterday issued the proclamation on Defence Force Radio that Palestinian journalists would no longer be given permits to move freely, because Israel claims that they “only” report the views of the Palestinian National Authority. Journalists of other nationalities would still be able to move freely, the proclamation stated.
Over the years, we have noticed an extremely disturbing, recurrent pattern of targeting, discrimination and harassment of Palestinian journalists by the Israeli armed forces. (See our previous protest letter to you, on October 12, 2000.) Even if they work for Western-owned media, such as Reuters, AP, AFP, Palestinian journalists – because of their knowledge of the language, terrain, etc. – have often provided the world with invaluable reporting about the ongoing Mideast Crisis. This latest violation of press freedom appears to be part of a concerted effort to control what is being reported.
IPI regards these crude restrictions on journalists and media outlets as gross violations of everyone’s right to “seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers” as guaranteed by Article 19 of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We consider the discrimination of journalists based on nothing but nationality as a serious infringement of basic human rights. We call upon Your Excellency to ensure that these acts are reversed immediately and unconditionally. We further urge you to ensure that journalists in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories are allowed to carry out their profession safely and without further harassment.
We thank you for your attention.
Johann P. Fritz
Director
