The Palestinian Center for Development and Media Freedoms (MADA) condemns the Israeli Occupation Forces firing rubber bullets deliberately on the Chinese news agency photographer Nidal Ishteh, in Oraq Burin village near Nablus city.

 Ishteh said that he went yesterday noon, 6 February 2010 to cover the confrontation between Israeli settlers and people from Oraq Burin village, after number of settlers vandalized water well used by the village farmers to irrigate their crops. the Israeli army was in the area, and when he was covering the confrontation, one soldier approached him and ordered him to stop covering, but Ishteh insist to do so, the soldier shot him with rubber bullets, wounding him in his left foot, so he couldn’t continue his work, and he was treated by the medical team who was in the place.

MADA also condemns the Israeli occupation forces detention of a bus, which was carrying fifty journalists, on the Container checkpoint yesterday evening, while they were returning from Ramallah to Hebron, after they voted in the Journalists syndicate election, and also the attack on the Baladna local Radio producer and presenter in Hebron Raed Al-atrash. Al-atrash said that the Israeli soldiers ordered them to disembark the bus and confiscated their identity cards, and started to speak obscene words, so he told the solider to stop speaking these words; particularly because there were ten female journalists with them. So they argued, after that the soldier pushed, cuffed, and took him to a closed room, and returned the identity cards to the rest of journalists, and ordered them to leave, but they refused to go unless he is released. Al-atrash added: “They detained me about one hour and a half, where they provoked me by gestures and words, and then the officer came and made me sign a paper which stated that I was not tortured, and that they did not inspect my personal belongings, then they released me.