On 29 May, freelance photojournalist Bilal Al Tawil was arrested by the Israeli army from his home in Hebron, the occupied West Bank.
On 19 March 2024, Israel’s security forces arrested Palestinian woman journalist Rula Hassanein and confiscated her laptop and phone during a raid on her home in Bethlehem, south of Jerusalem, in the occupied West Bank. Hassanein, who is well known for her coverage of the Israeli occupation and human rights violations, had to leave her nine-month-old baby with her husband.
The story of Hassanein is only one of the 76 journalists who have been arrested by Israel since the beginning of the war in Gaza. Israel’s security force escalated its practice of imprisoning Palestinian journalists without charge following the 7th of October.
“The objective behind detentions and Israel’s intensified campaign [...] is to deter journalists and steer them away from carrying the voice of the Palestinians. The Israelis are adamant that they will control the story coming out of the West Bank,”said PJS deputy head Omar Nazzal in an interview with Al Jazeera.
“Another objective is to intimidate other journalists by creating the image that anyone who tries to speak will be their next target,” Nazzal concluded.
At present, the PJS registers 20 Palestinian journalists subject to administrative detention, a procedure that allows the Israeli military to hold prisoners indefinitely on the basis of secret information and without charging them or allowing them to stand trial. Israel uses administrative detention extensively and routinely; and it has intensified its use to crackdown on dissident voices, including journalists, since the start of the war in Gaza as stated by press freedom organisations.
IFJ General Secretary Anthony Bellanger said: “Israel’s over-reaching campaign to harass and prosecute Palestinian journalists in the occupied West Bank is unacceptable and a clear attempt to silence media reporting on the ground. We condemn the increased persecution of journalists by Israel’s security forces and urge them to stop hindering journalists’ work. We will redouble our efforts in coordination with our affiliate, the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate, to ensure that violence against journalists must not go unpunished ”.
To date, at least 102 Palestinian journalists and media workers have been killed since the outbreak of the war in Gaza, according to IFJ data.