http://www3.haaretz.co.il/eng/scripts/article.asp?mador=19&datee=5/29/01&id=120167
Foreign press: Israel ignoring IDF shooting of reporters
By Tamar Hausman
Gunfire injuries inflicted on foreign journalists by the Israel
Defense Forces (IDF) - deliberately or through negligence - have been
more numerous and more serious since the start of the current Intifada
than in the first Palestinian uprising, says Howard Goller, chairman
of the Foreign Press Association (FPA). Worse still, he says, the
Israeli government is refusing to deal with the matter.
"I don't remember the situation being as bad as this," says Goller,
who has worked as a journalist in Israel for 17 years - the last 16 of
them at Reuters.
And despite asking many authorities on dozens of occasions to
investigate shootings of correspondents and to clarify rules with IDF
soldiers, the FPA has not received a single response. Twenty foreign
correspondents in the West Bank and Gaza have been shot at and hit
with live ammunition or rubber-coated bullets since the start of the
crisis, and the FPA is demanding an IDF investigation into nine of the
cases.
"We are angry at the apparent failure of the government and the IDF to
send clear and constantly reiterated directives to its troops in the
field that reporters have an absolute right, an obligation, to be
present at confrontations and clashes and are not mere 'civilians' -
as one officer suggested to the New York Times - caught unluckily in
some dangerous place," the FPA chairman wrote in the report he
presented at the association's annual meeting on Sunday.
"Does someone have to be killed for [the government] to wake up?"
Goller said in an interview this week with Anglo File. "We don't
accuse the army of deliberately targeting journalists. But we would
like the army to find out whether these occurrences have been
deliberate or just [result from] negligence." In either case, he
added, the IDF should do what is necessary to prevent further such
incidents.
The most recent shooting of a journalist occurred during Nakba Day
demonstrations last week at the Ayosh Junction, when French TV
reporter Bertran Aguirre of TF1 was shot in the stomach by an IDF
officer who, according to film footage, seemingly aimed at Aguirre.
Aguirre was wearing a flak jacket, which absorbed the shot and saved
him from injury and possible death. His case is one of the nine about
which the FPA is requesting an investigation.
"It's not just his luck that he was wearing a flak jacket. It's the
government's too. They'd face serious problems if Aguirre were to
have died," says Goller.
The FPA has voiced its concerns to the Ministry of Defense, the IDF,
the Government Press Office, President Moshe Katsav, Foreign Minister
Shimon Peres, Yossi Gal - Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's head of
information - and former prime minister Ehud Barak, while he was
premier. However, while Goller says that the FPA has received no
response from any of the authorities it has contacted, he says that in
two cases an Israeli official has contacted the journalist directly.
Goller attributes the high casualty rate among foreign reporters in
the current Intifada to the presence of "more clearly-defined places
where clashes happen" than was the case in the last Intifada. The
Ayosh junction in the West Bank, and the Erez junction and Netzarim
junction in Gaza, for example, are places where clashes occur
regularly, so journalists very frequently hang around there and are
often caught in the fray, he says. In contrast, the sites of clashes
during the previous Intifada were less predictable, so journalists
often arrived on the scene after the clashes had taken place.
Despite the violent situation, correspondents aren't shying away from
covering events in the territories. "They are big boys and girls, and
they're trained to stay out of the way. At the same time, they're
angry," Goller says.
The FPA has also lodged complaints with government bodies and called
for improved access within the West Bank and Gaza for Israeli foreign
correspondents, and within Israel for Palestinian foreign
correspondents - access which the Israeli government has often limited
since the onset of the crisis, says Goller.
Goller was re-elected on Sunday as FPA chairman, but he is leaving his
job as deputy bureau chief of Reuters in Israel in August to become
the deputy head of the Reuters World Desk responsible for Europe, the
Middle East and Africa. The FPA will hold an election this summer for
his replacement.
