Palestinians search for survivors in a three-storey building that was brought down by an Israeli strike in Gaza City. (Wesam Saleh, Maan Images)

One early and easy victory for Israel in Gaza has been in its battle to manage the news. Israel's invasion is a very private war against Gaza's population, to which only invited guests -- the representatives of our major media outlets -- are being given access.

In the last Iraq war, America set a precedent by requiring Western reporters to "embed" with its forces before they were let near the battlefield. Israel is following suit, adopting similar measures to control the flow of bad news from Gaza.

The restrictions on who can report and what they can tell us explain in part why more than a fortnight after an Israeli soldier was captured, almost every Western reporter is still referring to him as "kidnapped"; why the destruction of vital civilian infrastructure such as Gaza's only power plant is described as "pressure" rather than what it is -- collective punishment, a violation of international law and a war crime; and why the deaths of large numbers of Palestinians, civilians and militants, in the current attacks are receiving far less coverage than the deaths of the two soldiers enforcing the occupation that gave Israel the pretext to launch its invasion.

Gaza -- a giant open-air prison -- could not offer a more perfect environment for an occupier wanting to manage the news. Israel controls the borders and can decide who is allowed in and who is refused access. Freedom of the press is meaningless on these terms.

Israel developed its own "embedding" strategy during the disengagement from Gaza last year. Only journalists from the big news organisations were allowed into the Strip, on special army buses that drove straight to the settlements. Those without accreditation from the main media organisations, and those who had upset Israel with their previous reports, had little hope of gaining entry. Disfavoured journalists were doubtless supposed to take note for next time, and change the tone of their coverage.

The big media organisations have no interest in pointing out why they have special access to Gaza and at what price such privileges were bought. An admission from them would hint at some of the subtle pressures already influencing their reporting and might expose the cosy arrangement that offers them a monopoly on the flow of information at a time when they are already feeling the heat from the rise of Internet journalism not subject to the agendas of wealthy owners and corporate advertisers.

Israel's system of embedding operates at two levels: it ensures that many potential journalists are not in a position to report from Gaza; and then it imposes a range of pressures on those journalists who are there.

When Israel withdrew its settlers and soldiers from Gaza last August, the windfall was that it gained absolute control over who was allowed in and out of the tiny sliver of land on the Mediterranean coast. The result: just as Palestinians find it all but impossible to get out of Gaza, foreigners find it nearly as difficult to get in.

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The hermetic sealing off of Gaza follows a series of steps taken by Israel in the past few years to discourage foreigners from venturing into places where its soldiers prefer to go about their business unobserved.

In late 2002 and 2003 the Israeli army killed two peace activists with the International Solidarity Movement, Tom Hurndall and Rachel Corrie. It was a very effective deterrent to other activists -- as well as freelance journalists who might be mistaken for activists -- considering living in the occupied territories.

Foreigners stopped "embedding" themselves in Palestinian areas, and in consequence there was a rapid loss of the Internet diaries of life under occupation and eyewitness accounts that were creating a fledgling but useful "alternative journalism".

Since then Israel has been on the lookout for anyone at its borders whom it suspects of belonging to peace organisations or being recruited to work in Palestinian organisations. Non-Israelis are held for lengthy questioning and usually deported if Israel suspects them of planning to enter the occupied territories, whether their purposes are legitimate or not.

As a result, the West Bank and Gaza are now sorely deprived of the young idealists and hopeful journalists who once travelled around the occupied territories.

Israel has claimed that its measures are designed to protect these individuals and its own soldiers from unnecessary and dangerous confrontations. But in practice, Israel has ensured that independent witnesses -- including those that were once able to describe at first hand and in their many native tongues the horrors being inflicted on the Palestinians -- are now largely absent from the occupied territories.

Instead "professional" reporters, based in Israel, venture into these areas only to report after the event, when the best they can hope to achieve is to present two conflicting narratives: the Israeli official version and Palestinian eyewitness accounts.

Since the disengagement, the process of isolating Gaza has intensified, ensuring that a far narrower range of voices are being heard -- in practice, only those of professional journalists who have the sensitivities of their news desks back home and their careers to worry about.

To read the full article, please visit Al Ahram Weekly's website.