Journalists and media workers in the Palestinian Territories are increasingly becoming the victims of political and military clashes between Hamas and Fatah, an international conference has heard.

Speakers at this week's Arab Broadcast Forum in Abu Dhabi said that since Hamas took power from Fatah in Gaza in 2007, conditions for media workers in the Palestinian Territories have become more difficult.

Palestinian factions "behind most attacks"

Arab and foreign journalists have been caught in the crossfire during fighting between rival factions. Others have been targeted for their alleged support for either of the two groups.

The level of rhetoric and the amount of "hate speech" on some outlets has increased.

The offices of the public news agency Wafa and the Palestine Broadcasting Corporation (PBC) have been vandalized by Hamas forces for allegedly "spreading Fatah propaganda".

According to the Palestine Partners Centre for Media Development, 92 out of 140 attacks on journalists in 2007 were carried out by Palestinians, the other 48 being attributed to Israelis.

Some Palestinian journalists have been detained by pro-Hamas or pro-Fatah groups for up to three months.

Kidnappings such as that of Alan Johnston, the BBC correspondent held for nearly four months in 2007, have made it very difficult for foreign reporters to move freely, especially in Gaza.

The number of Israeli attacks on journalists is falling as attacks by Palestinian factions increase, the conference heard.

Nadim al-Jamal, Middle East regional coordinator for the Brussels-based International News Safety Institute, confirmed that Palestinian journalists were increasingly facing growing instances of assaults, arrests, seizure of equipment and the closure of media outlets by both Hamas and Fatah.

"Palestinian reporters are the front-line victims of political reality in Gaza and the West Bank," Jamal told the Forum.

All participants agreed that the intra-Palestinian conflict was making conditions worse for reporters in the West Bank and Gaza.

The cycle of "tit-for-tat action and reaction" only exacerbated matters, said Jamal. "If a newspaper is shut in the West Bank, another one will be closed down in Gaza," he noted.

Israeli attacks continue

Several speakers noted that although Israeli attacks on the media in the Palestinian Territories had declined, they were still continuing.

Salwa Kan'ana, Editor, Middle East Report, Reuters, wondered why the Israeli army claimed it could not identify Reuters cameraman Fadil Shana'a - killed by a shell fired from an Israeli tank in the Gaza Strip on 16 April this year - as a journalist, although he had the letters "TV" prominently displayed on his clothing.

And Muhammad Hazim Ghurab of Al-Jazeera said: "Our correspondents in Palestine have been subject to a lot of problems... Israel does not allow us to take footage of the horror they inflict on the Palestinians."

But Munir Mawari, a freelance journalist based in Washington DC, thought Israel was the lesser of two evils.

"Arab journalists find it easier to work under [Israeli] occupation than in areas under the control of Hamas or the Palestinan National Authority," he said.

Political bias

Speakers were divided about the extent to which Palestinian journalists allowed their political allegiances to affect their reporting by promoting either Hamas or Fatah.

Salwa Kan'ana believed that most Palestinian journalists did not let their political preferences affect their work. He said: "The majority feel their loyalty lies first to journalism, before politics."

No participants saw any prospects of an imminent reduction in the influence of Palestinian political divisions on the media.

But Kan'ana concluded on an optimistic note, saying: "The more pressure they face, the more strongly Palestinian journalists want to report the truth."

Source: BBC Monitoring research 5 May 08

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