Hawzah News Agency (Occupied Territories) - The Islamic resistance movement, Hamas, has strongly denounced the Tel Aviv regime’s deliberate targeting of Palestinian journalists in the occupied territories, describing the policy as a new attempt by Israeli authorities to conceal their crimes.
Hamas spokesman Hazem Qasem said in a statement on Monday that “Israel’s crime of deliberately targeting photojournalist Moaz Amarneh is fairly heinous, and confirms the intransigence and defiance of the Israeli army as regards all norms and international law.”
Meanwhile, Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh showed solidarity with Amarneh during a cabinet meeting in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah on Monday, and covered his left eye.
“If Israel wants to shut down Moaz’s eyes, all of our eyes are his,” Shtayyeh said.
Shtayyeh praised the widespread popular solidarity movement with Amarneh, emphasizing that his deliberate targeting sheds light on the situation of other Palestinians who have fallen prey to Israel, most notably the Abu Malhous Sawarkeh family, which lost eight of its members in an airstrike carried out by Israeli warplanes in the Gaza Strip last week.
Hundreds of Palestinian mourners participated in a funeral procession on Thursday for eight members of a Gaza family.
Amarneh lost one of his eyes after an Israeli soldier opened fire at him as he was covering clashes between local youths and Israeli forces in the city of Surif, located 25 kilometers northwest of al-Khalil last Friday.
Israeli forces have shot and blinded a Palestinian journalist in one eye during attacks on protesters in al-Khalil (Hebron) in the West Bank.
According to a report released by the Palestinian Journalists' Syndicate (PJS), Israeli forces committed 600 rights violations against Palestinian journalists between October 2018 and October 2019 in the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem al-Quds and the Gaza Strip.
The report added that Israeli forces shot 60 journalists, who suffered serious wounds. Some 43 journalists were also hit by sound grenades directly thrown at them by Israeli forces.
“More than 170 journalists were beaten, detained or banned from coverage,” the report also revealed.
The report further noted that 10 journalists were detained during this period, raising the number of journalists inside Israeli jails to 18.
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