DOHA, 5 November 2005 — Al-Jazeera satellite news channel said yesterday one of its cameramen was freed after he was allegedly beaten and then arrested by Israeli troops while filming a protest in the West Bank.
“Nabil Al-Mazzawi was filming one of the Israeli soldiers who was beating activists during a protest” against the separation wall being built by Israel, the Doha-based channel’s Editor in Chief Ahmad Sheikh told AFP.
“Then, another soldier came on and beat Nabil Al-Mazzawi who was later detained,” he said. The station’s correspondent said Mazzawi’s camera and the film he was taking at the time of the incident were also taken by Israeli forces.
Al-Jazeera later reported that Mazzawi was released after he was held for “several hours” by Israeli forces.
An Israeli police spokesman said an Al-Jazeera cameraman was arrested during the protest after first assaulting a border policeman.
The spokesman told AFP he did not know whether Mazzawi was beaten, but if so, it was within his rights to file a complaint.
The incident took place in the village of Beilin, near the town of Ramallah, at a weekly protest against Israel’s controversial separation barrier.
Six Israeli peace activists were also arrested during the protest, rally organizer Abdullah Abu Rahma told AFP.
Israeli peace activists, foreigners and Palestinians demonstrate against the barrier in Beilin every week in protests routinely broken up by Israeli forces firing rubber bullets or tear gas.
Israel has insisted the massive barrier of electric fencing, barbed wire and concrete wall is vital to stop potential attackers from infiltrating the country and Jewish settlements in the West Bank.
The Palestinians condemn the wall as an attempt to grab their land and undermine the viability of their promised state.
On July 9, 2004, the International Court of Justice issued a non-binding ruling that parts of the 650-kilometer wall which criss-crosses the West Bank were illegal and should be torn down.
Meanwhile, Israeli troops in the West Bank overnight arrested eight Palestinians following days of continued Israeli-Palestinian violence, military sources said yesterday. Among those detained were two suspected members of the Islamic Jihad faction and three members of Hamas, the sources said.
A Hamas member died yesterday of injuries sustained in a shootout with Israeli troops earlier this week in the West Bank.
Mohammed Asaf Ikmel, 22, had been seriously injured during clashes overnight Sunday to Monday between Palestinians and Israeli troops in the northern West Bank town of Qabatiya, his family and security sources confirmed. He died in hospital in the West Bank town of Nablus.
In another development, plans to build a mini Jewish neighborhood in an Arab district of East Jerusalem have won initial authorization from a city council committee, a weekly Israeli newspaper reported yesterday.
A committee responsible for preserving historic sites has given the green light to destroy the Shepherd Hotel, acquired in 1985 by Jewish American millionaire Irwing Moskowitz, said Bonus, a Yediot Aharonot group publication.
Moskowitz is a key supporter of right-wing organizations bent on Judaising Arab districts of East Jerusalem, which Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war and later annexed.
In place of the hotel in the neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, planners want to build a six to eight-story apartment building, synagogue and kindergarten.
Israelis, meanwhile, yesterday marked 10 years since Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by a Jewish extremist for his policy of land-for-peace reconciliation with the Palestinians.
