For Palestinian journalists, violent attacks by Israeli forces come with the job
Israeli border guards scuffle with a photojournalist in protest, north of Ramallah 2019
Juman Abu Arafeh reports in Middle East Eye:
Cornered and afraid, 23-year-old Palestinian journalist Sondus Ewies spoke nervously to a group of Israeli officers who gathered around her while she was filming at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound last month.
“I didn’t do anything. I was just filming and doing my job,” she recalled telling them. Ewies took out her international press card, hoping to avoid detention, but she was met with a cold shrug by an officer who replied: “This is a false card which we do not recognise.”
Israeli officers detained Ewies and confiscated her personal phone. She was then taken in for questioning and handed a three-month ban on visiting the mosque compound, located in occupied East Jerusalem.
This was not her first run-in with Israeli authorities. Ewies has been stopped multiple times while on air and has also been beaten while she was covering various protests. She told Middle East Eye that she was more afraid of the temporary ban than the actual detention.
Ewies lives in the Palestinian neighbourhood of Ras al-Amoud, just south of the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, making the latter a central part of her journalistic work. She said she was counting down the hours to enter the mosque compound after it was closed for two months due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Many Palestinian journalists face arrest and temporary bans from the compound on the grounds that they had filmed settler incursions there or Israeli forces assaulting worshippers.
In 2016, Israeli authorities drew up blacklists containing names of Palestinians, including journalists, prohibited from entering the compound.