JERUSALEM: Throughout the two-week bombardment of the Gaza Strip most journalists have been kept out by the Israeli government on the pretext of security. And the Israelis are pleased with the results.

Foreign journalists have been forced to report without getting to the detail of what is going on. That meant, at least in the early days of the bombardment, that reporters who would have been in Gaza were instead reporting from Israeli towns and cities under fire from Hamas, and Israeli officials found it easier to get themselves in front of a television camera.

An Israeli official told me they were delighted at a BBC TV correspondent broadcasting from Ashkelon in a flak jacket, reinforcing the impression that the Israeli city is a war zone when there is more chance of being hit by a car than a rocket. The notable exception is al-Jazeera TV, which has a bureau in Gaza City and has been broadcasting live from there.

Danny Seaman, head of the Israeli government’s press office, who has described foreign journalists as a “fig-leaf” for Hamas, says the exclusion of reporters from Gaza has worked in Israel’s favour as it has forced a greater focus on Israel’s side of the story.

“When you have hundreds of journalists coming in, most haven’t the faintest idea about the war or the situation,” he said. “Take the UN school [where 42 people were killed by an Israeli shell] for example. There’s a lot of questions as to what actually happened. If the foreign media had been there it would have had much more of an impact on the conflict than it has at the moment. For the first time, when Israel raised questions, journalists had to address these issues and not get caught in feeding frenzy of reporting the story.”

Israel has long accommodated an often critical foreign press corps, generally without interference, although hostility grew after the outbreak of the second intifada because journalists were perceived as pro-Palestinian. The Israeli government boycotted the BBC at times and a cabinet minister wrote to the corporation to accuse its highly regarded former Jerusalem correspondent, Orla Guerin, of anti-Semitism.

The BBC has two Palestinian producers in Gaza who have supplied material. But its Middle East editor, Jeremy Bowen, is among those unable to enter Gaza. “We’ve had coverage but of course it is not the coverage that we would have liked to have had because we would have preferred to have gone in ourselves,” he said.

Israel says there is no formal ban on reporters entering Gaza and that they are prevented only by the security situation. But the government has failed to implement a high court order to let in reporters when the principal crossing is open.

Israel is not alone in this. British forces restricted access by journalists to parts of Afghanistan because of UK government fears about public reaction to pictures of dead Afghans. The US has manipulated coverage from Iraq, via the policy of embedding journalists with troops and discouraging “unilateral” reporters.—Dawn/Guardian News & Media