The New York Times · New York, New York · 30 March 1982

CP-1982-055

Israel Tightens Control Over Arab Newspapers

By DAVID K. SHIPLER

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Transcribed from the clipping

JERUSALEM, March 29 — In an effort to dampen the unrest in the West Bank and to play down the political strength of the Palestine Liberation Organization, the Israeli military authorities have tightened their censorship of Jerusalem’s Arab newspapers and have prevented most of them from circulating outside the city.

During the last four days, taxicabs and trucks carrying copies of the papers for distribution on the West Bank have been intercepted before dawn at army checkpoints, and all copies have been confiscated.

On Friday, all three Arabic dailies, plus an English-language weekly, were seized; the three dailies were confiscated again Saturday and Sunday, an army spokesman said, and today two of the three — the pro-P.L.O. Al Fajr and Al Shaab — were barred from the West Bank, while only the more moderate Al Quds was allowed to pass.

As a result, the 800,000 Arabs in the West Bank, where widespread rioting has occurred during the last 10 days, have had to depend mostly on Israeli radio and television broadcasts in English and Arabic, and on overseas broadcasts by Jordan, Syria and the P.L.O. for news of events in their own territory.

Editors complain, and Israeli officials acknowledge, that the military censor has excised all reporting on the West Bank disorders by the Arab papers’ own staffs, forcing them to publish only material that had already appeared in the Hebrew-language Israeli press. Even a good deal of that information has been cut out of the Arabic-language papers, editors say.

“This is the worst for the last 15 years,” said Mahmoud abu-Zalaf, the editor in chief of Al Quds. “Last week we appeared for two days without a single line of news on the West Bank. And if we appear with only five percent of the news, they confiscate the paper.

They won’t even allow us to print the news covered by the Israeli radio and television — not even news printed from the Israeli papers.” The confiscations have also inflicted a financial cost on the papers. “It is almost worse than closing us,” said the editor of Al Fajr, Hanna Siniora.

“Ninety percent of our issue is stopped from being distributed, after we spend money on paper and ink, electricity, printing. We have to repeat the advertisements. The paper has been constantly losing money during this period.”

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