They captured 130 Palestinian journalists in 2022 and assaulted 13 others in one month.
Israel obstructs the work of the "Fourth Authority" and discourages it from revealing the truth
Photographer Jaafar Shtayyeh during his first injury in 2022. Emirates Today
Israel deliberately targeted 4 journalists in Jenin last October.
Emirates today
The assassination of Abu Aqleh, the most prominent violations in 2022. Archive
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In the early morning hours of Saturday, the eighth of last October, the Palestinian journalist, Jaafar Shtayyeh, the photographer of the French News Agency (AFP), toured the Palestinian territories in the cities and regions of the West Bank, to document the events of a military operation carried out by the Israeli occupation forces in the Jenin camp. North West Bank, accompanied by three Palestinian photographers working with international news agencies: Muhammad Abed, Mujahid Al-Saadi, and Nidal Shtayyeh.
The four journalists were on top of one of the residential buildings, protecting them from the occupation’s bullets that target every moving object, and in the midst of their work to take pictures of what the forces are doing above the ground, the Israeli snipers fired heavily at them, in a repeated scene of the killing of the Palestinian journalist Sherine Abu Aqleh at the entrance to Jenin camp in the month of May of 2022.
This shooting incident put the lives of Palestinian photographers at risk of death, according to the testimony of Ishtayyeh, an AFP photographer, during an exclusive interview with "Emirates Today", where he confirmed that the occupation snipers deliberately targeted them despite their wearing press uniforms and vests that did not protect them from live Israeli bullets. He said, "We all escaped certain death."
Target the fourth power
The targeting of Shtayyeh and the three journalists is an incident among several crimes committed by Israel against the Fourth Authority in the Palestinian territories. As the months of last year passed, the Arab Journalists Support Committee, based in Beirut, documented the injury of 13 journalists in December of 2022, by the Israeli occupation forces that committed Also, during the same month, there were 36 violations of media freedoms in the occupied Palestinian territories.
The Israeli assault against an AFP photographer last October is the third he is subjected to during 2022. The second assault was last May, but this time by a settler, who tried to run him over with the bus he was driving, so that Shtayyeh also escaped certain death.
An (AFP) photographer recounts the course of the Israeli attack against him, saying: “On the 17th of last May, I was present near the Israeli military checkpoint of Hawara, towards the Palestinian town of Hawara, south of Nablus, in the northern West Bank, to cover the events of the injury of a Palestinian citizen who was subjected to shots were fired by the Israeli army.”
Shtayyeh added: “While my camera was documenting the incident, I was surprised by an Israeli bus driven by a settler carrying settlers, deviating from its path towards me at a crazy speed, trying to run me over, but I fell to the ground with my camera, which documented the course of this brutal and arbitrary attack.”
Shtayyeh confirmed that the settler deliberately ran him over to discourage him from his role in documenting the crimes of the occupation that exterminate the Palestinians in cold blood, noting that settlers and soldiers target Palestinian journalists directly and continuously in an attempt to blur the truth and hide pictures of Israeli killings from around the world.
widespread assaults
On the 18th of February of last year, an AFP photographer was injured by gas bombs and rubber bullets fired by the occupation forces while he was in Jabal Sabih in Nablus, documenting the events of the attacks against the Palestinian population, so that this would be the first Israeli attack incident that targeted Shtayyeh in 2022.
The AFP photographer indicates that Palestinian journalists have been subjected to countless attacks during the past year, while they were in the Palestinian areas and towns that are subject to military attacks, or near Israeli checkpoints, using metal and sponge bullets, sound bombs and toxic gas, Pepper gas, spraying with waste water, dragging, beating with sticks, and rifle butts by the occupation soldiers and settlers.
In its report on press freedoms, the Journalists Support Committee documented dozens of cases of preventing and obstructing Palestinian journalists, amid provocative acts by the occupation and its settlers, such as pushing and kicking, in addition to beatings and gunfire.
Handcuffed
In clear violation of international norms and laws, Israel is constantly chasing the truth guards in the Palestinian territories. During the past year, its army forces arrested 130 Palestinian journalists in various cities of the West Bank and the city of Al-Quds Al-Sharif, according to the Palestinian Prisoners' Information Office.
With the beginning of the new year 2023, the Israeli occupation authorities continued to detain 20 Palestinian journalists behind the bars of their cells, including Palestinian journalist Dina Jaradat, from the “Al-Marah” neighborhood in Jenin Governorate, who has been serving a detention sentence since the seventh day of last August.
Among the former Palestinian journalist prisoners, Mahmoud Issa, a resident of the holy city of Jerusalem, who is serving a life sentence three times and 46 additional years, since the third day of June 1993.
The records of the reports of the Journalist Support Committee monitored a case of arbitrary Israeli violations against imprisoned journalists behind its prison bars, as it deprived the imprisoned Palestinian journalist and writer Walid Daqqa, 60, of his necessary treatment, and continued the policy of medical neglect against him, in addition to disregarding his life.
In the last weeks of the past year, the family of the prisoner, Daqqa, from the town of “Baqa al-Gharbia” in the occupied Palestinian interior, revealed that he had leukemia, after conducting the necessary medical examinations for him behind bars.
The prisoner, journalist Daqqa, has been behind Israeli prison bars for 37 years, among the oldest nine Palestinian prisoners, while the occupation extended his sentence for an additional two years until March 2025, after he was scheduled to be released next March.
• Palestinian journalists have been subjected to countless attacks during the past year, while they were in the Palestinian areas and towns that are subject to military attacks, or near Israeli checkpoints, by the occupation soldiers and settlers.
• Settlers and soldiers target Palestinian journalists directly and continuously in an attempt to obscure the truth and hide the Israeli pictures of killing from the world.
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