In Dealings With Media, Hamas Resorts To Brutality

During the first Fatah protest rally at Friday prayers here late last month, a number of Palestinian journalists trying to cover the event were beaten by the Hamas police force. Some journalists were arrested and their cameras seized, prompting complaints from the Gaza branch of the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate.

The next night, Aug. 26, at about 10 p.m., Hamas police officers entered Sakher Abu El Oun’s courtyard, preparing to arrest him. Abu El Oun, a reporter for Agence France-Presse and head of the union here, telephoned a colleague.

“I called one journalist” who sent out the information “and within minutes, about 70 journalists and some human rights activists came to my house and prevented them from taking me away,” he said. “My kids were crying, it was a very ugly picture.”

The police told him, he said, “that they had instructions to arrest me, I had refused, and I would be responsible” for any consequences.

Hamas seems confused about how to quash Fatah protests and simultaneously deal with the media. Trying to nurture a reputation for honesty and legal behavior since it conquered Gaza in bloody fighting in June, Hamas leaders promise journalists freedom of action, but the police intimidate the journalists.

The result is a kind of self-censorship, local journalists say, that goes beyond what they traditionally practiced under Fatah, which also tried to manipulate or own the Palestinian press.

Abu El Oun, 42, is a good case in point.

The immediate crisis for him finally ended when a Hamas government spokesman, Taher el-Nounou, a former journalist, arrived at his house with a message from the Hamas prime minister, Ismail Haniya, telling the police to leave.

Later, speaking for the union, Abu El Oun talked about the broader problems journalists are facing. “We are asking for the freedom to cover the protests,” he said. “They can prevent the demonstrations, but not the right of journalists to cover them. We are under self-censorship because we don’t know what is allowed, what isn’t. There is no clear policy. All the journalists are worried, scared.” He has since been asked by his employer not to speak to journalists.

One Hamas leader, Mahmoud Zahar, called Abu El Oun “one bad guy” during an interview and accused him of “presenting himself as a Fatah leader,” in part because of his role in what was a Fatah-dominated union. But in 2001, Abu El Oun was badly beaten with an iron bar by members of the Fatah-dominated Preventive Security Force and nearly died. He underwent significant reconstructive surgery but returned to work.

Local Palestinian journalists describe a confusing situation, where Hamas, as a fundamentally religious organization new to politics and used to obedience, is putting undue pressure on the media, especially on television and the use of photographs. Hamas is in a fierce political struggle with Fatah, and both factions are using the media outlets at their command - the official Palestinian television and radio by Fatah, which also has its own outlets and newspapers, and Hamas’s newspapers, radio and newly sophisticated television channel, Al Aksa, which is modeled on Hezbollah’s Al Minar.

Each accuses the other of being an infidel and in the service of outsiders - Fatah says Hamas serves Iran; Hamas says Fatah serves Israel and America. In addition to children’s shows urging war against Israel and the Israeli occupation, praising martyrdom and attacking Jews, Hamas television runs a news scroll underneath devoted entirely to Hamas-flavored news. The official Palestinian Authority television, hard to see now in Gaza, is only a little more balanced.

Fatah in the West Bank has closed Hamas-affiliated media outlets and charities and prevented Hamas-supported newspapers from circulating or Hamas television from broadcasting. Equipment has been confiscated or destroyed, and six Hamas journalists have been arrested, Nounou said, and 12 more beaten. But here in Gaza, Hamas has done the same to Fatah and the Palestinian Authority-controlled media. At least eight outlets were closed, including three newspapers, and many Fatah journalists have fled.

Ahmad Odeh of Maan news agency said: “This government came into power by a coup, and in Ramallah, there is an emergency government that rules by decree. There’s no democracy on either side. What do you expect?”

Local reporters, including those working for international news agencies, have been pressured, as they used to be pressured under Fatah, but now with more menace. Yet Hamas leaders say they are committed to freedom of speech, while demanding that journalists report “objectively.”

After the first Fatah rally, Nounou, the government spokesman, said during an interview that the police were ordered to leave journalists alone unless they engaged in the protest themselves. A few days later, Hamas said it would no longer work with the Palestinian journalists union that Abu El Oun heads because it was supposedly pro-Fatah, dissolved it and threatened to prosecute its leaders.

Similarly, Hamas at first said that the prayer protests were fine if peaceful, but then decided to ban them, causing further clashes. As some protesters were beaten, some more journalists were beaten and arrested, too, before being released. One policeman told reporters, according to The Associated Press, “If a single shot is on TV, you know what will happen,” then drew a finger across his throat.

Zahar said, “There have been mistakes, but they are decreasing.” Nounou has been an important mediator between police and journalists and has usually secured their release. “We follow every complaint,” he said. “We respect freedom of expression and even allow Fatah here to hold press conferences and demonstrations, which Hamas cannot in the West Bank.”

Under Fatah, “the rules were essentially clear,” said another local journalist working for a different news agency. “Don’t attack Yasir Arafat or Muhammad Dahlan or Rashid Abu Shbak,” all prominent Fatah figures.

But Hamas, he said, “isn’t used to criticism and doesn’t like it.”

– By Steven Erlanger

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