Israeli Army Said to Beat Reporter, Detain Cameraman in West Bank
Israeli soldiers beat and threatened a reporter and detained a camera operator in the occupied territories Saturday, Palestinians said.
The army said it was checking the reports.
In Hebron, in the occupied West Bank, three soldiers hit Bassam Schweiki with a club in the leg and hip, Palestinians said. Schweiki, a part-time Reuters news agency reporter, was interviewing Palestinians in the town’s produce market when the soldiers approached him, they said.
“They snatched my (tape) recorder and broke it. I showed them my press card. They hit me with the club, cursed me and then threatened that if I continue working as a journalist they would come back and beat me,” Schweiki said.
In the West Bank town of Jabalya, soldiers detained and later released Majdi Jamil Arabid, a Palestinian cameraman working for World Television News, a WTN producer said.
Arabid, 26, from Sheik Redwan in Gaza, was covering clashes between soldiers and Palestinians when he was detained. He was held for an hour at the army outpost in Jabalya and released. The army confiscated his videotape of the clashes, the producer said.
Israeli soldiers harassed two other journalists last week.
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