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Pro-Israeli editorials/columns

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While covering events in the Mideast, journalists dodging bullets to get the news

Lillian Swanson – November 6, 2000 – The Philadelphia Inquirer

Inquirer reporter Michael Matza packed his bags in a hurry.

Foreign editor Paul Nussbaum had called that morning in early October, asking if Matza could catch a plane later that day to Tel Aviv. The editor said the fighting between the Palestinians and Israelis near Jerusalem was escalating, and the paper needed another reporter on the scene.

Amid the rush at home to get ready, Matza's wife, Linda, suggested that he stop by their children's schools to say good-bye to their son and daughter.

"I gave my kids a hug and a kiss," he said. "I told them I would call and e-mail them as often as I could."

Matza says he took the time partly because he is a family man who was about to disappear from home for a while, and partly because of, well, what happened the last time he was there.

Matza, 49, a former national correspondent based in Boston, normally covers criminal justice issues for the paper. But in April, The Inquirer's Middle East correspondent, Barbara Demick, was expecting a baby, so he was asked to cover for her while she was on leave. It's a practice journalists call "parachuting in," and it's a job for resourceful and intrepid souls.

We send reporters into the world's hot spots because it's the best way to give readers firsthand accounts of what's going on. Nussbaum tells a reporter about to go on a risky assignment to "use common sense and don't take any unnecessary risks."

In Israel, at least six journalists, most of them cameramen, have been injured in the crossfire since violence erupted Sept. 28.

During Matza's first tour, on May 15, he learned that Palestinians would be demonstrating at Ayosh Junction, a bridge that is a common site of clashes in Ramallah.

To see the action, he needed to pick a side to observe from. His editors had warned him never to watch from the middle. But sometimes, he learned, the middle shifts.

That afternoon, he drove with Los Angeles Times reporter Becky Trounson and Palestinian journalist Maher Abukahater, who would translate for both papers, from Jerusalem to Ayosh Junction. They chose a spot about 40 yards behind the Israeli soldiers.

More than 1,000 Palestinians on the other side of the bridge began tossing stones and Molotov cocktails. From their side, the Israeli soldiers fired rubber bullets.

"All of a sudden we heard a different sound of gunfire," Matza said. "It had a different pitch."

Just as the journalists realized they needed to back up, Matza looked over at the translator, standing five feet away.

"I see that he's been shot. On the back of his light-colored shirt, I see a spot of blood. First it's a pencil point, then the size of a cherry, and then as big as an apple.

"He staggers a couple of steps, and crashes to the ground. He falls on his back. I see the huge exit wound on his chest."

"I couldn't believe it. I looked at Becky, and she has a horror mask on her face," he said. "At first, we are really scared. More shots are coming. We just start to run."

But then Matza turned and ran back to help his colleague on the ground. He leaned over, trying to figure out how to pick him up.

Moments later Israeli combat medics arrived to carry the wounded translator away. Matza and the L.A. Times reporter ran for cover in the nearby City Inn Hotel.

They and other journalists were trapped inside the lobby for four hours as thousands of rounds of live ammunition were fired. Israeli soldiers ran into the hotel and used the upper floors for sniper perches.

The American reporters, desperate to learn what happened to the translator, first heard a radio report that he was dead. Then, by calling out on cell phones, they heard he was alive in a Jerusalem hospital.

When the shooting halted, the soldiers withdrew from the hotel and the journalists cautiously ventured out. After counting the bullet holes in their cars, they drove back to Jerusalem to file their stories.

Later, he learned the translator had been shot by a bullet from the Palestinian side.

Matza returned safely in August from his stint in the Middle East, and from his second trip in October. Last week, he was helping his kids get ready for Halloween.

But the narrow brush with a bullet was still fresh in his mind.

"I don't take unnecessary risks. You can promise everybody from your editor to your wife, but sometimes, the risks, you can't know where they are," he said.

 

An Economic Blow to Palestinians

Editorial – November 6, 2000 – The Los Angeles Times


     Five weeks of conflict between Israel and the Palestinians has not only wiped out the seven years of political gains achieved during the Mideast peace process, it is also causing increasingly severe economic effects. For Israel, with a gross domestic product nearing $100 billion, the problem so far remains manageable. For the Palestinians, with a GDP 1/20th that size, it threatens devastation.
     Directly or indirectly, about a third of the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip work for Israeli employers or rely on Israeli consumers to buy their agricultural and other products. Overall, an estimated 50% of the Palestinian economy is tied to Israel. Before the latest disturbances, 120,000 or more Palestinians went to jobs each day in Israel. The fighting has sealed the borders and cut off this income.
     Israel is being pinched especially in the area of tourism; one projection puts the potential loss from canceled tourist visits and delayed construction at $750 million. But the Palestinians have suffered far more. The border closings have choked off virtually all of their exports to Israel--their biggest customer--and through Israeli ports to other countries.
     There were hopes that the tight links between the two economies would help keep radicalism under control. Those hopes have been dashed, and the self-destruction may only be beginning. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak has ordered a study on the feasibility of physically separating Israelis and Palestinians by erecting walls and barriers and cutting many of the economic links forged over the last three decades. This plan probably will not be considered unless Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat goes ahead with his stated intention to unilaterally declare Palestinian independence around Nov. 15. If that happens, and if Israel responds by imposing separation, the political and economic consequences would be catastrophic.
     The mutual anger and hatred of the moment rule out any early move to political moderation. But the emotions of their peoples must not blind responsible leaders to the consequences of a severe economic disruption that threatens to become infinitely worse. The overt struggle may be over land, sovereignty and national pride. But for the Palestinians especially, none of these will count for much if normal economic life isn't restored.

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