In Jerusalem’s Old City, journalists banned while tourists film away

Israeli police acknowledged on Wednesday that security forces are preventing journalists from entering sections of the Old City of Jerusalem as part of efforts to lower tensions around the Temple Mount, which has been at the epicenter of the latest deadly flare-up in Israeli-Palestinian violence.

The cobbled streets around the walled compound have been the scene of prayer, protests and violent clashes in the past week between Palestinians and Israeli police.

Reporters and camera crews have flocked to the area to cover the events — even as wary tourists stayed away, following a July 14 attack in which three Israeli Arabs used guns smuggled into the Temple Mount to shoot and kill two policemen guarding nearby.

However, Israeli police have kept the news media away from flashpoint areas.

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said on Wednesday that “journalists are being prevented from coming in those specific areas where there have been disturbances and riots.” According to Rosenfeld, the decision was made by the Jerusalem police district.

Reporters have complained this week that they were being preventing from covering the unrest around the shrine while tourists were able to freely move about the city and film with their mobile phones.

An Associated Press cameraman was told by police on Wednesday that he couldn’t enter the Old City and was ordered to keep back a hundred meters from the gateway.

Meanwhile, video uploaded to Twitter by an Israeli Channel 10 journalist trying to report from outside the Ottoman-era Old City walls also showed police ordering camera crews to leave the area.

The Foreign Press Association said journalists have been shoved and that this has created “a dangerous situation” where accredited journalists were blocked from doing their jobs.

“This appears to be a kind of innovative censorship that is surprising in a country that prides itself on press freedom,” the association said.

The focus of the tensions is the site revered by Jews as the Temple Mount, home of destroyed biblical temples, and the holiest site in Judaism. Known to Muslims as Haram al-Sharif (Noble Sanctuary), it is the third holiest site of Islam and houses the Dome of the Rock shrine and the Al-Aqsa mosque.

Muslim worshipers have stayed out of the sacred Jerusalem compound since Israel installed metal detectors there last week, in the wake of a July 14 attack in which two policemen were killed by three terrorists armed with guns they had been smuggled onto the site. Instead, Muslim worshipers have performed mass prayer protests outside the shrine, some of which devolved into clashes with Israeli security forces.

Immediately following the July 14 killings, Israel took the rare step of closing the Temple Mount to Muslim worshipers on a Friday — the holiest day of the week in Islam — in order to search for weapons, before reopening it two days later after installing metal detectors at the entrances to the compound. Previously detectors had only been placed at the Mughrabi Gate, the entrance for non-Muslim visitors.

On Friday, a West Bank teenage terrorist affiliated with Hamas stabbed to death three members of a family having Shabbat dinner in their home in the settlement of Halamish, having written a Facebook post protesting the “defiling” of Al-Aqsa by Jews.

The attack came during a weekend that saw violent clashes throughout the West Bank, with five Palestinians killed.

Israel removed the metal detectors early on Tuesday, but Muslim authorities are still urging worshipers to stay out of the compound, demanding that Israel remove cameras, railings and any other security measures introduced in recent days.