The Foreign Press Association is deeply disturbed by demands from Hamas in Gaza that news organizations with armoured cars in the territory pay an excessive fee to register them for use.
In the past, authorities in Gaza applied the same fee for armoured cars as they do for other vehicles with the same size and type of engine, namely 2,100 shekels a year for a diesel vehicle. Hamas officials are now impounding foreign news organisations’ armoured cars and demanding 4,000 shekels a year.
In July last year, representatives from the FPA met with Hamas officials in Gaza, including the deputy minister for transport, and it was agreed that the usual 2,100 shekel fee would be applied, with the deputy minister citing the PA’s own Transport Ministry legal guidelines. That agreement is not being respected.
We call on the Hamas authorities to respect their own laws and previous commitments. News organizations are prepared to pay the legal fee to operate vehicles on Gaza’s roads, but will not submit to excessive fees that appear to have no basis in law.
The FPA protests in the strongest possible terms the detention today by Israeli border police of William Booth, the Washington Post’s Jerusalem bureau chief, and Sufian Taha, the paper’s West Bank correspondent.
Shortly after noon, the two were interviewing Palestinian and Jewish residents of Jerusalem at Damascus Gate, along with Washington Post correspondent Ruth Eglash. When Booth and Taha tried to interview some high-school students on the steps opposite the gate, police waved them away. They then retreated to interview the teenagers under a tree.
Shortly after, border police waved the two journalists over and asked them for their IDs. They presented their Government Press Office cards as identification, but these were waved away and they were asked for official identity documents.
Although the journalists made it very clear that they were reporting a story for the Washington Post, police took them to a nearby police station, where they were held for about 40 minutes, then released. When they asked police why they had been held, police said they had suspected the journalists of “inciting” Palestinians.
The FPA protests this absurd accusation against a respected international news outlet, as well as the detention, however brief, of an accredited foreign journalist and his Palestinian colleague.
We note that it comes in the context of heavy-handed tactics – including violent attacks – deployed in recent months by border police against foreign journalists and their Palestinian co-workers covering the unrest in Jerusalem and the West Bank.
We do not think it is coincidental that a baseless accusation of “incitement” was made at a time when blanket accusations of bias are being levelled against the foreign press by Israeli officials and commentators.
We furthermore urge Israeli police and other authorities to recognise their own government-issued GPO cards and allow those holding them to work without hindrance.