State doubles down before High Court on limiting Old City media access

Following criticism of the police as arbitrarily blocking media access, the state attorney’s office filed a legal brief detailing a new set of criteria regarding the issue.

By YONAH JEREMY BOB
Updated: OCTOBER 17, 2018 05:00
THE OLD CITY of Jerusalem – quartered and whole (photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)
THE OLD CITY of Jerusalem – quartered and whole
(photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)
An NGO revealed on Tuesday that the state has toughened its position before the High Court of Justice on the police’s potential power to limit media access to tense areas such as the Old City during certain protests.
Following criticism of the police as arbitrarily blocking media access, the state attorney’s office filed a legal brief detailing a new set of criteria regarding the issue.
According to the document, the new criteria are designed to better balance the rights of media access to public areas where news events are unfolding, with the need to maintain public order.
The new criteria come in response to petitions to the High Court filed after a series of July 2017 controversies in which, during protests and unrest relating to the Temple Mount, members of the media were blocked from access to portions of the Old City, even as non-media Jewish people were not blocked.
The Association for Civil Rights in Israel – which, along with representatives of the Israeli and foreign media, filed the petitions – slammed the new criteria as allowing senior police officials to continue the arbitrary limiting of access.
ACRI said that until now the police had unconstitutionally limited access with no authority, and now they will limit access with an illegally written formulation.
The association said that the criteria allow blocking media access based on vague notions that coverage of an event might escalate tensions – an excuse which can also be abused to simply block general negative or embarrassing media coverage.
A spokesman for the Justice Ministry implied that its approval of the police rules on the issue was limited to the question of their legality as formulated and not to whether they will be properly implemented.
In February, the High Court pressed the police, an NGO and the media to negotiate and find a compromise about media access to the Old City during tense periods.
Apparently, the state formulated the new criteria without reaching an agreement with the petitioners, an issue to which a Justice Ministry spokesman did not respond.
In July 2017, following a Palestinian terror attack against Israeli border policemen on the Temple Mount, Israel temporary closed the site, restricted access to worshipers under a certain age and put a series of heightened security measures in place.
Palestinians protested in response, in some cases violently.
During the protest period, there were several times when the police allowed Jewish Israeli citizens to enter certain tense areas while barring journalists. There have also been instances in which journalists were roughed up by police.
Attacking this decision, ACRI said that the police had the right to declare an area closed for security reasons where reasonable, but could not allow some persons access and specifically restrict journalists.
ACRI lawyer Roni Peli has said that the petition was about the fundamental “right of the public to know” what is happening during such tense times and how police and security forces are handling themselves.
Peli pointed out that in this day and age, when only non-journalists are allowed into these zones, they start taking videos of what is happening with their smart phones anyway, but they lack any commitment or skill for objective and professional reporting.
In February, the state told the High Court that the issue was moot as there had been no restrictions for months and that even when there had been restrictions, many times they had only been for a few short hours at a time.
Peli responded that the July dispute was only the latest in a long history of police infringing on media access, particularly in the Old City and surrounding the Temple Mount.
Furthermore, she said that restricting media access for even a few hours was problematic, as often those few hours were the key moments when the conduct of security forces needed to be followed most closely.
On the one hand, Justice Uri Shoham in February seemed to take the state’s side, rejecting the petitioners’ claim that the police were obligated to get them to sign-off on new procedures. On the other hand, he pressed the police that it would be better for them to reach a deal.