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Access denied in Gaza

By Jay Bushinsky Posted Apr 1 2009

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Time will tell who really won the war between Israel and the Hamas regime in the Gaza Strip, but one thing is certain: the news media, especially foreign correspondents based in Israel, will not be the victors.

From start to finish, the international news media were denied access to the Gaza strip by the Israeli troops who control the main crossing point—check point Erez, 42 miles south of Tel Aviv. Even their Israeli colleagues, including accredited military correspondents who normally have total access to military information, were kept out.

The Foreign Press Association in Israel campaigned vigorously to end the ban. Its chairman, Steven Gutkin, the AP bureau chief in Jerusalem, complained that entry to Gaza was denied to journalists several weeks before the war began.

Spokespeople for the military command attributed this policy to the Defense Ministry, implying that the army was not to blame. In turn, a spokesman for the Defense Ministry, Shlomo Dror, said, “We did not want to risk the lives of our people in order to allow journalists to enter. We knew that there were journalists in Gaza. The issue of freedom of the press is very important to us, but on the other hand, when it comes to lives of people, we did not want to take risks.”

Gutkin was authorized by the FPA’s board to engage one of Israel’s top lawyers to plead before Israel’s Supreme Court. “The foreign press corps is mandated to cover the Gaza Strip for the rest of the world,” Gutkin said. “This is a story of vital interest, and banning foreign correspondents is a violation of press freedom. Actually, the ban went into effect before the fighting began. The truth is that many correspondents already were working inside the strip and were there during the hostilities. We believe that any war must be covered. The presence of foreign correspondents is vital to provide news and watch out for abuse by both sides.”

One important consideration that has not been taken into account here by any of the parties is the personal risk entailed in entering a theater of war without even minimal backup by army medical personnel and without any guarantee of safe passage by the opposing side. A group called the “Army of Islam” kidnapped a foreign correspondent, Alan Johnston of the BBC, and held him hostage for four months. Hamas kidnapped James Bennett of The New York Times in 2004, but he narrowly escaped.

Eventually a compromise was accepted reluctantly by the FPA whereby six members and two non-members would be allowed through every day. (They had to sign waivers absolving the Israel Defense Force of responsibility for their personal safety.) Despite this deal, it was not implemented immediately. When the approved correspondents—six were chosen in a daily FPA lottery and two others (non-members) were picked by the director of the Government Press Office—arrived at Erez, they were summarily turned back, ostensibly because the situation on the ground was too dangerous.

The FPA’s campaign was endorsed by the head of Israel’s national press council, former Supreme Court justice Dalia Dorner. Reacting to reports mainly by Palestinian colleagues based in Gaza that the casualty toll was horrendous and property damage enormous, she said that the presence of international journalists in Gaza as eyewitnesses might have offered an opportunity for more balanced coverage.

When the foreign correspondents were granted unrestricted entry after the cease-fire, their reports were not in line with what Israel’s official publicists might have preferred. The London Daily Telegraph’s Tim Butcher, who filed from Gaza as an FPA pooler on Jan. 18, quoted Auni Najar, a 44-year old Gazan, as saying, “I have been to the house of my brother and this is all what was left.” Najar pointed at a cart of blankets and curtains sodden with rain, Butcher wrote.

“He has no home now so he has come with his wife and nine children to live in my house, a house that I already share with my wife and three children,” Najar said. “I don’t know how we are going to survive.”

On the other hand, Butcher gave a balanced assessment of Israel’s military action. “There had been no carpet bombing of large areas, no firebombing of complete suburbs. Targets had been selected and then hit, often several times, but almost always with precision munitions. Buildings nearby had been damaged, and there had been some clear mistakes…But, in most cases, I saw the primary target had borne the brunt…For the most part, I was struck by how cosmetically unchanged Gaza appeared to be.”

The BBC’s Paul Wood, who was an FPA pooler the same day, described the town of Beit Lahiya where he saw “the first real destruction and a hint of how so many lives were lost here.” He added: “There were streets churned up by the Israeli heavy armor; overturned cars; a lake of raw sewage in the street; and a mosque left a broken charged ruin. Smoke was still rising from a large school building.”

Lorenzo Cremonesi of Corriere della Sera, who managed to get into the Gaza Strip on his own, was one of the first journalists to cast doubt on the casualty figures issued by Hamas. He calculated that they were twice the true figure. His on-scene reports also were significant: He quoted Um Abdullah, a Palestinian woman, as having told him, “Practically all of the tallest buildings in Gaza that were hit by Israeli bombs…had rocket launching pads on their roofs or were observation decks for the Hamas. They had also put them near the big UN warehouse which went up in flames.”

Arab journalists, such as Daoud Kuttab, who was filing from Amman, Jordan, after the bombardment of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency school in Gaza, were frustrated by the absence of independent journalists on the scene. “While UNRWA emphatically denied that anyone had shot from the school area, Israel quickly claimed that their action is justified because, according to their claim, shots had been fired at them from the school,” Kuttab wrote. “International journalists could have helped settle the issue and could have pointed out the potential of a war crime.”

Since the TV footage was taken exclusively by Palestinian cameramen, especially those working for major outfits like Al-Jezeera, Israeli spokesman Brig. Gen. Avi Benayahu tried to offset this by ordering the IDF film unit to shoot combat scenes. This was made available to all the international networks but the FPA, enraged over the ban imposed against its members, urged its component foreign TV networks to boycott them.

After the flimsy pool arrangements got under way, it appeared that several of the poolers failed to make their coverage available to the FPA membership.

This violation of the FPA’s pool rules was blamed on the non-members who were allowed to enter Gaza. As a result, the FPA executive Secretary, Glenys Sugarman, issued a notice that the pool arrangements had been suspended until further notice. They never were renewed.