Journalists Are Kept at Bay by Israeli Bullets

In his three decades covering wars in the Mideast, television producer Charles Enderlin has had his run-ins with Israeli soldiers--but never a nasty rebuff like the one he got last week.

Trying to reach Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat’s besieged West Bank headquarters, Enderlin and his TV France 2 crew were turned back at an Israeli checkpoint. Before leaving, they tried to film the soldiers but were ordered to stop.

“Show me a written order that I cannot film here,” the producer demanded.

“Instead of a paper, you’re going to get a bullet in your camera,” snarled an Israeli reservist, raising his automatic rifle.

After more bickering, the producer turned his back and headed toward his car.

Then came the reservist’s parting shot. A bullet sliced through the air between Enderlin and his cameraman at chest level.

As Israel wages its biggest military campaign in the West Bank in 35 years, journalists trying to cover it are running up against the ultimate roadblock--Israeli bullets fired at them, often without warning. Veteran correspondents and a media watchdog group say the restrictions are the tightest they have ever seen here and are meant to conceal what the Israelis are doing in reoccupied Palestinian cities.

At least 20 journalists have come under Israeli fire since the offensive began March 29, according to the Paris-based watchdog group Reporters Without Borders. In most cases, the fire apparently is meant as warning shots, but five journalists have been wounded, including one American, Anthony Shadid of the Boston Globe.

“It’s a form of nonverbal communication, their way of saying, ‘Please leave the area at once,’ ” said Cameron Barr, a Christian Science Monitor reporter who has been shot at twice in recent days. “They want to get a message across. Believe me, I left with alacrity. It was an extremely effective message.”

A convoy of correspondents got the message Friday when it approached Arafat’s compound in Ramallah and came under attack from two Israeli army jeeps. Without warning, one of the jeeps rammed a clearly marked CNN vehicle, and soldiers threw several stun grenades. As the convoy retreated, soldiers fired plastic bullets, chipping the CNN car’s reinforced glass windows.

Five journalists from Agence France-Presse and Spanish television got the message Sunday as they walked into the West Bank town of Yatta wearing flak jackets bearing the letters “TV” in big white tape and waving a white flag. They retreated under Israeli gunfire.

And journalists who stayed in Ramallah after Israel declared it a closed military zone got the message all last week. Israeli snipers took potshots at their hotel, and passing tanks fired into the air.

“The Israeli army is knowingly targeting journalists in a deliberate policy of intimidation,” Robert Menard, general secretary of Reporters Without Borders, said Sunday. “The Israelis want a news blackout so they can work in a vacuum and do as they like.”

Israel now controls all the West Bank’s cities save one and has declared most of them off limits to reporters. Israeli officials warn that any reporter who enters those cities is provoking Israeli troops and violating Israeli law, even though Israel ceded the area to Palestinian control in the mid-1990s.

To that end, senior army officials have defended the use of stun grenades against journalists but insisted that shooting at them is contrary to orders. They say various shooting incidents are under army investigation.

Reporters, editors and other critics of the restrictions insist that journalists must have freer access to the West Bank to report fairly on Operation Defensive Shield. Israeli leaders say the assault is to uproot Palestinian terrorist networks; Palestinian leaders say it is aimed at destroying Palestinian self-rule and has killed scores of noncombatants.

One of the enduring controversies of the offensive, for example, is whether dozens of monks, priests and nuns inside Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity are hostages or willing companions of the 140 or so Palestinian gunmen and civilians who took refuge in the shrine after Israeli troops surrounded it last week.

Journalists trying to get close to the church have been repelled by Israeli gunfire.

In a rare public debate on the subject on Israeli television Sunday night, Tami Allen-Frost, a producer for Britain’s ITN television network, confronted Brig. Gen. Ron Kitrey, the army’s chief spokesman.

“We are filming the tanks because we are not allowed in any deeper,” she said. “Allow us to film the Palestinian population, the suffering.”

“We are talking here about a war,” Kitrey replied. “People are shooting at each other, and the instruction to minimize the journalists’ presence in the area was made to minimize the ‘teasing effect,’ which instigates violence. We get enough from our enemies and work hard to save our soldiers’ lives. At times we cannot deal with the media as well.”

He promised an easing of restrictions in the coming days, when the offensive is expected to conclude.

Israeli and foreign journalists had somewhat freer access to Israel’s conflict zones during the 1967 and 1973 Mideast wars, Israel’s war in Lebanon 20 years ago and the army’s previous actions against Palestinian uprisings in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

One reason for the tighter restrictions now, Israeli journalists say, is the army’s furious reaction to an Israeli broadcast last month of an army raid on a Palestinian refugee camp near Ramallah. The footage, filmed by an Israeli Channel Two crew that was allowed to accompany soldiers, showed the troops blowing off the door to a family’s house with explosives--only to find that they had fatally wounded a woman inside.

“The army does not want anyone watching too closely because they know that what they do does not make for pretty pictures,” said Amos Harel, military correspondent for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. “The American army acted this way in its last few wars, in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the Israelis have learned from this.”

Israel has done more than shoot at journalists to get across the message that they are not welcome in the West Bank.

The government has expelled crews from CBS News, NBC News, Al Jazeera and Abu Dhabi Television from Ramallah. It revoked the credentials of two reporters from Abu Dhabi TV, accused of broadcasting anti-Israeli incitement; one of the two was deported Saturday.

A cameraman for Reuters and one from the Dubai-based Middle East Broadcasting Co. were strip-searched by Israeli soldiers on a street in Ramallah. Israel has arrested at least eight Palestinian journalists, according to Reporters Without Borders, and has renewed fewer than half the permits of the 600 Palestinian journalists accredited here last year.

In another incident last week, soldiers forced a group of journalists out of an interview with a Palestinian family at its Ramallah apartment. A member of the family had been arrested and released by the Israelis, and the journalists wanted to talk to him.

An hour into the interview, soldiers turned up outside the apartment and sent word that the journalists had to go. As they left, the reporters were confronted by soldiers with guns pointed at them and ordered back to their hotel.

Israeli government spokesman Daniel Seaman denied any intent to block coverage of the West Bank. “We could have cut off cables, limited satellite accessibility, but we haven’t done that stuff,” he said.

But he defended the arrests and restrictions on Palestinians working for foreign news organizations, saying they are “no doubt employed” by Arafat’s Palestinian Authority. “They will use every method to hurt us, including exploiting the media and Israeli democracy. We have to put a stop to this matter.”

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Times staff writers Sebastian Rotella in Bethlehem and Tracy Wilkinson in Ramallah contributed to this report.