Israel blocks the media from the catastrophe unfolding in Gaza

Paul Woodward, Online Correspondent

• Last Updated: January 06. 2009 5:58PM UAE / January 6. 2009 1:58PM GMT

"I keep the children away from the windows because the F-16s are in the air; I forbid them to play below because it's dangerous. They're bombing us from the sea and from the east, they're bombing us from the air. When the telephone works, people tell us about relatives or friends who were killed. My wife cries all the time. At night she hugs the children and cries. It's cold and the windows are open; there's fire and smoke in open areas; at home there's no water, no electricity, no heating gas. And you [the Israelis] say there's no humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Tell me, are you normal?"

The question came from a resident of Gaza speaking by phone to the Israeli journalist Amira Hass. Like most of the foreign media she has been barred from entering Gaza by Israeli authorities in spite of the fact that Israeli Supreme Court ruled last week that eight foreign correspondents, from among the hundreds now struggling to report on this war, should be allowed to enter the Palestinian territory.

"Israel has allowed no foreign correspondents to enter the Strip from Israel since it began its Operation 'Cast Lead' against Hamas on Dec 27," Haaretz reported.

"The Israel Foreign Press Association petitioned the Supreme Court on the issue, and Israel agreed to allow a poll of eight journalists into the Strip when the crossings were opened.

"Two of the places would be assigned by the Israel Defence Forces, and the other six placed would be decided on the basis of a lottery in the presence of an attorney."

The Associated Press reported: "Israel scrapped arrangements on Monday to allow the first foreign reporters into the Gaza Strip since the military launched its offensive against Palestinian militants, adding to mounting media frustration at being locked out of the war zone...

"The Associated Press and a some other news organisations have Palestinian reporters, photographers and cameramen based in Gaza. Many media have no reliable source of independent information.

" 'The barring of outside news organisations from Gaza hampers the flow of unbiased information of vital interest to the entire world. Authorities on all sides should work to allow access by journalists in keeping with the aims of press freedom,' said John Daniszewski, the AP's managing editor for international news."

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) regards the Israeli ban as a dangerous violation of press freedom that adds to "ignorance, uncertainty and fear" in the region.

"The Israeli ban on foreign news media from Gaza since Dec 27 raises concerns that there is a systematic attempt to prevent scrutiny of actions by the Israeli military," said Aidan White, IFJ General Secretary. "The eyes of the world are on Gaza, but Israel is trying to censor the news by keeping the media at bay."

Human Rights Watch urged the Israeli government to abide by the Israeli high court ruling and allow foreign media into Gaza. The presence of journalists and human rights monitors in conflict areas provides an essential check on human rights abuses and laws-of-war violations, Human Rights Watch said.

Fares Akram, a reporter for The Independent described how the Israeli invasion turned into a personal tragedy when his father became one of the first casualties of the ground war.

"Mahmoud, a teenage relative, was with my father when the Israeli bomb smashed into the house. The force of the airstrike threw him 300 metres. They found Mahmoud's body in a neighbour's field.

"We buried my father and Mahmoud yesterday morning in a very quick funeral, knowing Israeli tanks were just 3km away, on the outskirts of the city. We could hear the rattle of the machine-gun fire accompanying the tanks. The Israelis may say there were militants in the area of our farm, but I'll never believe it. The most advanced point for rocket-launchers is 6km south. Up at the border, it is just open farmland with nowhere to hide.

"My father, Akrem al Ghoul, was no militant. Born in Gaza and educated in Egypt, he was a lawyer and a judge who worked for the Palestinian Authority. After Hamas took over, he quit and turned to agriculture. Dad's father, Fares, who had been driven out of his home in what is now Israeli Ashkelon in 1948, had bought the land in the 1960s.

"During the second intifada and until the Israelis withdrew from Gaza in 2005, the farm was taken over by Israeli settlers, but after 2005 we went there every holiday. In Gaza, the only escape is the beach or, if you are lucky enough, the farmland. My father hated what Hamas was doing to Gaza's legal system, introducing Islamist justice, and he completely opposed violence."

The Guardian reported: "As Israeli forces carved up the Gaza Strip yesterday, dividing the territory in two, the UN warned of a 'catastrophe unfolding' for a 'trapped, traumatised, terrorised' population.

"Among the terrorised was Mahmoud Jaro. He was sheltering with his wife and four young children in his home in Beit Lahiya, on the eastern side of the Gaza Strip, within sight of the Israeli border, when he heard the first tank engines in the early hours of Sunday.

"He grabbed his children, the youngest only three, and fled. 'I couldn't see anything. The area was dark,' he said. 'They cut off the electricity. We were moving in the pitch dark.

" 'There were shells, rockets everywhere. I was just trying to protect my children. They were very scared and afraid. My youngest son was crying all the time.' Eventually the family made it across Beit Lahiya to his in-laws' house in a relatively safer part of the town.

" 'I don't know what's going on. I don't know what the Israelis want. This time it's from the air, the sea, the ground at the same time. I've never experienced it like this,' he said."

The New York Times said: "For nine days now, doctors have been battling to keep Shifa running under the most adverse circumstances. Sanitation workers constantly mop up blood while Hamas security officers stand guard. But scant resources are being stretched to a breaking point, and a terrible stench is in the air.

"Dr Mads Gilbert, a Norwegian who was allowed into Gaza last week to give emergency medical aid, and who has worked in many conflict zones, said the situation was the worst he had seen.

"The hospital lacked everything, he said: monitors, anesthesia, surgical equipment, heaters and spare parts. Israeli bombing nearby blew out windows, and like the rest of Gaza, here the severely limited fuel supplies were running low.

"Oved Yehezkel, the Israeli cabinet secretary, said Sunday that from the information at Israel's disposal, 'there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza.' "

In Haaretz, Aluf Benn wrote: "Israel is in a bind. If it pulls out now from Gaza, it will appear to have cut and run at the first sign of trouble in battling Hamas. And if it goes on to a full occupation of the Strip, it may pay a heavy economic and political price without achieving its political goals."

While tracing the similarities between Gaza now and Lebanon in 2006, Rami G Khouri wrote: "Hamas and Hizbollah did not exist before around 1982. Their birth and strength must be understood largely as a response to Israel's occupation and colonisation policies in Palestine and Lebanon, alongside other secondary reasons.

"Hamas and Hizbollah are the ideological step-children of the Likud Party and especially Ariel Sharon, whose embrace of violence, racism and colonisation as the primary means of dealing with occupied Arab populations ultimately generated a will to resist. The trio currently carrying on Sharon's legacy of brutality - Ehud Olmert, Ehud Barak and Tzipi Livni - seem genetically blind to the fact that the more force and brutality Israel uses against Arabs, the greater is the response in the form of more effective resistance movements that have wider public support."

pwoodward@thenational.ae