PARIS, January 20, 2009 (WAFA)- Reporters Without Borders (RSF) went, Monday, to the Israeli embassy in Paris and, in a symbolic gesture, handed a copy of the call signed by 160 international news media to restore media access to the Gaza Strip.

In a press release issued, Monday, Reporters Without Borders said that the gesture was intended to reinforce the pressure on the Israeli Government to lift the news blockade around the Gaza Strip, the target of an unprecedented military offensive since 27 December. The news blockade violates international humanitarian law and Israeli supreme court decisions.

This situation is all the more absurd as a large number of foreign journalists have, since Sunday evening, been allowed to enter the Gaza Strip across the Egyptian border at Rafah.

Reporters Without Borders Secretary-General Jean-François Julliard also announced that Reporters Without Borders will visit the Gaza Strip as soon as it is reopened to the press in order to investigate the conditions in which journalists are working and to assess the impact of the news blockade on coverage of the Israeli Aggression on Gaza.

Launched by Reporters Without Borders on January  9, the petition stated, “Allow the news media into the Gaza Strip!”, it added, “we believe the Israeli government’s decision to exclude the press from the Gaza Strip is untenable and dangerous.”

It is incomprehensible that Israel is preventing the press from providing independent coverage of events that concern us all, the petition continued, there is only one solution to this situation: while taking the necessary security measures, the Israeli authorities must grant immediate access to the Gaza Strip to the media personnel who have been sent to cover this conflict.