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Journalists attacked with tear gas at Israeli checkpoint in Qalandiya on November 17, 2018. ABBAS MOMANI / AFP
The International Federation of Journalists, which represents more than 180 unions and 600,000 journalists worldwide, is holding a meeting of its executive committee this weekend in Ramallah, the capital of the Palestinian Authority. During a demonstration on Saturday, November 17 to demand freedom of movement, the delegation was greeted by tear gas clouds near the Israeli checkpoint Qalandiya. An unacceptable aggression for this federation that illustrates the difficult working conditions for local journalists in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
With our correspondent in Ramallah, Marine Vlahovic
Armed with their only press card, the journalists went to the Qalandiya checkpoint, one of the largest Israeli military checkpoints in the occupied West Bank, before being greeted by a salvo of tear gas, without any summons from the army.
A " free " physical aggression, denounces the Belgian Philippe Leruth, president of the International Federation of Journalists: " We were thirty, and we were advancing peacefully. Some slogans were shouted like "Freedom of the press", "Journalists are not terrorists", etc. I covered a lot of protests, and usually the police come in and say : "You stop, you do not go further". Here, not at all, we heard detonations and the first explosions of tear gas occurred. Palestinian journalists have been telling us for a long time what they are living, but when you experience it in the field, it takes on a whole new meaning . "
" No democratic state worthy of the name can do this, " the Federation said in an open letter to the Israeli prime minister. For the past month alone, the Palestinian Center for Media Freedom has recorded 48 press freedom violations, 39 of which were committed by Israeli security forces.