PARIS, April 27: Citing further grave rights violations against journalists attempting to report on Israeli incursions into the Palestinian territories, Reporters sans frontieres (RSF) has called on Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to free three Palestinian newsmen, one of whom is seriously ill.

“These journalists were just doing their job, according to our information, and we want an explanation of why they were arrested,” RSF secretary-general Robert Menard said in a letter to Sharon.

The three are Maher Hussein Romanneh, a presenter on Voice of Palestine radio, Jalal Hameid, of the privately-owned Bethlehem TV station Al-Rouah, and Hussam Abu Alan, an Agence France-Presse (AFP) photographer.

“We are especially concerned about Romanneh’s health and we ask that he be taken to hospital as soon as possible,” Menard wrote.

Since the start of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian towns on March 29, the RSF says, it has counted 17 arrests of Palestinian journalists, some of them having been roughed up and humiliated.

After a fact-finding mission to Israel from April 5 to 7, the RSF said the Israeli army was “deliberately intimidating journalists”, especially those from the Palestinian media.

Photographer Alan was arrested on April 24 at the Beit Anun checkpoint, near Al Khalil. Along with Reuters cameraman Mazen Dana and other journalists, he was going to Bani Naim to cover the funeral of two Palestinians.

Soldiers asked the photo-journalists to take off their bulletproof jackets and helmets and to show their IDs. Their mobile phones and other equipment were confiscated. Alan was then blindfolded and handcuffed and taken to a tank.

Dana was freed a few hours later. “They taunted, humiliated and threatened me,” he told RSF.

The army appeared to have handed Alan over to the Israeli secret police, the Shin Beth, for interrogation.

An army spokesman told the agency that he had been arrested because he had been in the C zone, an area entirely under Israeli control, and because he had no press card.

Alan, who lives in Al Khalil, has worked for AFP for seven years. Like most Palestinian journalists, he has not been able to get his Israeli press card renewed since the beginning of the year.