PARIS: As part of its policy to expose the brutalities of the Israeli government against the journalists covering the Middle East crisis, the Reporters Sans Frontiers (RSF) has issued a fact-sheet highlighting the highhandedness of the Ariel Sharon regime.

The figures speak for themselves, says RSF as it publishes a special report on the results of three weeks of Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories.

The RSF lists: seven journalists wounded; four detained; 15 arrested; 60 targeted by gunfire; 20 roughed up or threatened; 20 who had passports, press cards or equipment confiscated; 10 Arab media offices occupied or ransacked and one journalist deported.

The RSF, in its special report, says “the policy of the Israeli authorities towards the international media, especially Palestinian journalists, must be condemned for what it is: a massive, deliberate and conscious violation of press freedom and an unprecedented low in the history of Israel.”

The crimes of which Israel is guilty, notes RSF, includes “repeated obstruction of working journalists, arbitrary arrests, physical threats and a determination to belittle and humiliate — an aggressivity that has led to several journalists being wounded by gunfire and one even killed.”

RSF affirms that based on its own investigations, it’s able to declare that “these have not been blunders but a deliberate policy of hiding from the world the truth of the Israeli army’s violence and abuses, which must be clearly condemned and met with international sanctions.”

Fifteen journalists have been arrested since Israel began its occupation of Palestinian towns and cities on March 29, notes the RSF report. Among them, it lists: Ashraf Farraj and Jalal Hameid, of the local Bethlehem TV station Al-Rouah, were arrested by Israeli soldiers at the Bethlehem press centre on April 3, and taken to the Beitunia detention center near Ramallah; Ahmed Assi, a cameraman with ANN, who was arrested in Ramallah on April 2, and imprisoned at a detention centre in Ashkelon; Maher Hussein Romanneh, a presenter on Palestinian radio, who was arrested in Ramallah on March 30, and taken to the Ofer detention centre.

Another seven journalists have been wounded by bullets, notes RSF, some of them seriously. They include: Carlos Handal, a cameraman for the Egyptian station Nile TV, was hit by an Israeli sniper’s bullets on March 29, in Ramallah while travelling in a car marked “Press.” One bullet came through the windscreen and seriously wounded him in the throat.