ISRAEL: The Israeli government has suspended a controversial plan to make security checks on journalists before issuing them with press cards, and is expected to replace the official who instituted the scheme.
The decision was taken after Israeli editors and the Foreign Press Association mounted a campaign against new rules that would have obliged local and foreign applicants for press credentials to be security-cleared by the Shin Bet domestic intelligence service.
The International Press Institute wrote last week to the Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Ariel Sharon, calling on him to rescind the new rules, expressing concern that the concept of security risk "might be so widely defined as to include the possibility of journalists being refused the right of accreditation because of their writing".
The principal casualty of the government's about-turn is Mr Daniel Seaman, head of the government office in charge of renewing about 15,000 press cards annually.
Amid the controversy, it emerged that a government appointments committee decided in August that the performance of Mr Seaman, who has been involved in abrasive disputes with the foreign press, "was not benefiting the state of Israel".
Although he has served as acting press director for three years, the committee decided not to appoint him on a permanent basis.
A senior government official, who denied the decision was a response to what is seen as Israel's poor image in the international media, said: "You need someone who knows how to be nice to the press."
Mr Seaman claimed in an interview last year that leading foreign networks in Jerusalem were employing Palestinian producers and directors on the direct instructions of the Palestinian Authority. He also claimed that the government had successfully put pressure on foreign media employers to remove journalists regarded as unsympathetic to Israel.
His department barred Palestinian journalists from obtaining Israeli press credentials, a ban being tested in the courts. Journalists require press cards to operate in Israel and to cross Israeli checkpoints in the occupied Palestinian territories.
Mr Seaman said yesterday he had been made a scapegoat.- (Financial Times)