Ref: 126/2020
Date: 02 December 2020
Time: 14:00 GMT

Israeli occupation forces (IOF) and a group of Israeli settlers attacked a number of Palestinian journalists with tear gas canisters, sticks, and stones, while covering an event organized by the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) factions and the Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission for the protection of lands under threat of confiscation and razing in al-Ras area, west of Salfit. Several journalists were hit with stones during the assault.

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights strongly condemns this flagrant assault by IOF and Israeli settlers and asserts that it falls within IOF’s systemic policy against Palestinian journalists and national and international media covering Israeli violations in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt). IOF have persisted in these attacks targeting journalists despite the protection they enjoy as civilians under the rules of international humanitarian law. PCHR also confirms that these violations are part of IOF’s systematic plan to isolate the oPt from the rest of the world and to cover up their crimes against civilians, in order to maintain a false narrative that contradicts with reality.

According to PCHR’s investigations, at approximately 11:30 on Monday, 30 November 2020, peaceful protesters tried to stand in front of IOF bulldozers in order to stop them from levelling the lands. Israeli armed settlers then attacked the protesters and threw stones at them. IOF fired teargas canisters at the protesters and journalists, around 13 covering the incident in al-Ras area. The armed settlers attacked the journalists with stones and sticks; as a result, some of them were injured and some of their cameras were damaged. Among those journalists were Ja’afar Ishtayah, Jreis ‘Aazar, ‘Alaa Badarnah, ‘Issam al-Rimawi, Hisham Abu Shaqrah, Khaled Bdeir, Nidal Ishtayhah, Rani Sawaftah, Mohammed Turabi, Khaled Sabarnah, Mohammed Ishtayah, Tariq Yousif, Majdi Ishtayah and Hazem Naser.

Hazem ‘Emad Husni Naser (30), Al-Ghad TV Correspondent, said that:
“We went to cover the Israeli assault in Western Salfit. Immediately, armed settlers took photos of young men who were burning tents set by settlers on the Palestinian lands. Few minutes later, heavily armed Israeli military forces arrived while the settlers threw stones at us. The soldiers fired teargas canisters at us, and the protesters dispersed.”

PCHR believes that these IOF practices are part of the systematic violations committed against Palestinian journalists and prove IOF’s disrespect for international humanitarian law, including the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War.

PCHR calls upon all international press organizations to monitor the conditions journalists operate under in the oPt, and to exert all efforts at the international level to pressure the Israeli Government to stop all its crimes against the Palestinian civilians and their property in general and against journalists in particular.