Bethlehem/PNN /

Al-Haq, Law in the Service of Man, Al Mezan Center for Human Rights and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) requested in an appeal the intervention of United Nations Special Procedures to investigate the indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks on journalists and media properties in the Gaza Strip, as an infringement on the right to life and freedom of expression, in addition to the incarceration of a Palestinian journalist while reporting on the conflict, as a serious deprivation of liberty in breach of international human rights law.

From Saturday 7 October to Tuesday 10 October, at least seven Palestinian journalists were killed in Israel’s military offensive on the Gaza Strip. Their names are Muhammad Sobh, Aseed Al-Taweel, Hisham Al-Nawaj, Ibrahim Lafi, Muhammad Jarghoun, Muhammad Al-Salhi, and Asaad Shamlakh. A further ten journalists have reportedly been injured in the same reporting period. Further, journalist Haitham Abdel-Wahed is reportedly missing, while journalist Nidal al Wahidi was reportedly arrested and incarcerated by the Israeli authorities while he was reporting on events at Beit Hanoun/Erez checkpoint in Gaza on Saturday, 7 October.

On Saturday afternoon, Al-Haq, Al Mezan and PCHR also documented a number of Israeli attacks that targeted civilian infrastructure throughout the Gaza Strip, including the Falasteen Tower and the Watan Tower. The Government Media Office in Gaza reported damage to 40 media offices from this attack.

The current military offensive in occupied Palestine is taking place in the context of a settler colonial apartheid regime. Within this broader legal framework, Israel’s attacks on journalists amount to inhumane acts denying “the right to freedom of opinion and expression, and the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association”, for the purposes of maintaining the domination of Israeli Jews over Palestinians and systematically oppressing them within the besieged Gaza Strip. Further, the current targeting and attacks on journalists are part of a broader policy by Israel, the Occupying Power, of systematically curtailing press freedoms in the occupied Palestinian territory (OPT), i.e., the West Bank, including the eastern part of occupied Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip.

The illegality of attacks on journalists and news media derives from the protection granted to civilians and civilian objects under international humanitarian law, said the three rights organizations. It is considered a violation of international humanitarian law if a party to an armed conflict directs an attack against protected persons; or willfully kills or murders such protected persons.

The organizations reiterated that international human rights law continues to apply in times of armed conflict, alongside international humanitarian law, and that both bodies of law are intended to be complementary, rather than mutually exclusive.

They urged direct intervention with Israel to employ the principle of distinction and to stop carrying out targeted attacks on journalists in Gaza and the immediate release of journalist Nidal al Wahidi, arrested and incarcerated for carrying out his journalistic work.

They also called on the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court to carry out prompt, transparent, impartial, independent and effective investigations into these killings and disproportionate attacks destroying media property and recommended that Third States take immediate precautions to protect the Palestinian population in Gaza against further belligerent Israeli reprisals and ensure the right to life and security of Palestinian journalists and media workers throughout the occupied territory.

M.K.