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Israeli Troops Beat Egyptian TV Reporters in West Bank
CAIRO, Aug 13
(IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Israeli troops kicked and beat an Egyptian Television cameraman, Abdel Nasser Abdun, as he was filming at a checkpoint in the West Bank on Monday, drawing a formal complaint from Cairo, Egypt's state-owned MENA news agency said.
Reporter Tareq Abdel Gaber was also beaten during the incident at the Qalandiya checkpoint located between Jerusalem and Ramallah, and his cameraman, Abdun, needed hospital treatment after the attack, MENA said.
An Egyptian Television official in Cairo told Agence France Press (AFP) that the news report was correct, but added that the two journalists' injuries were "not severe".
The incident prompted Egypt's charge d'affaires in Tel Aviv, Ihab al-Sherif, to send a letter of complaint to Israel's foreign ministry expressing his country's "extreme indignation", MENA reported.
Sherif, who has been the highest official in the embassy since President Hosni Mubarak withdrew his ambassador to Tel Aviv in November, in response to Israel's escalated violence against Palestinians, told the news agency that Israel had promised to conduct a speedy investigation.
An Israeli army spokesman later said the soldier who beat the cameraman was given a 28-day suspended sentence and barred from of any positions of command.
The soldiers said they had intervened after the Egyptian refused to stop at the checkpoint despite their instructions, the spokesman said, adding that it was a "regrettable incident".
Israeli troops attacked the same Egyptian reporters about three weeks ago, MENA said.
Egypt was the first Arab state to sign peace accords with Israel in 1979, but ties have gone through frequent frosty patches, and Mubarak has recently denounced Israel for using excessive force against the Palestinians.
Dozens of Palestinian and foreign journalists have been attacked by Israeli soldiers since the violence broke out over 10 months ago.
The international organization, Reporters Without Borders (RSF - Reporters sans frontiers) - reporting on Israeli mistreatment of journalists covering the violence in the region, released a report on July 26th detailing the cases of 40 journalists who had been injured by bullets shot by Israeli Defense Forces (IDF).
RSF issued a press release on August 3rd detailing further serious cases, including the deaths of two journalists during an assassination attack in Nablus on July 31st, and the beating of a dozen Palestinian journalists by police "who wanted to prevent them from covering the fights on July 29th in front of al-Aqsa mosque," the press release said.
According to the press release, reporters also suffered mistreatment and harassment at checkpoints in Nablus on August 1st and 2nd.
"In this context of extreme military tension, the multiplication of incidents involving journalists is, for RSF, an increasing cause for concern," RSF said, calling on Israeli authorities to implement regulations protecting press freedom and to "guarantee the free circulation of local and foreign journalists in the Occupied Territories."
The New York based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has also issued a report outlining the continued violence by Israel against reporters. Their report also documents dozens of incidents where fully recognizable journalists have been directly targeted by the IDF.
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