Held at gunpoint in Nablus: Orla Guerin

Irish hack Orla Guerin writes about her recent experience with being held by IDF forces.

…But before we found him, Israeli troops found us, forcing us at gunpoint into a disused room on the upper storey – first the cameraman, then the producer, then me. There we saw Rana, trapped in a chair in the corner, a white headscarf on her silver hair. She was neatly dressed, and alert, flanked protectively by the doctor and a Palestinian paramedic. Soldiers seized our phones, confiscated our camera tape and when we tried to leave forced us back, at the barrel of a gun.

She continues:

As the minutes stretched into hours, he asked how long we would be kept there. “You’ll be here until we kill someone,” a soldier replied, in perfect English. “We’re being held illegally,” I said. The soldiers nodded in agreement, but still refused to let us go. “You could compromise our operation,” one said, “by revealing our location.”

More seriously she notes:

Later a few threats were murmured in my direction. “She’ll get out of here in a body bag,” one soldier said in Hebrew, assuming incorrectly, that we would not understand.

Crazy behaviour by any armed force, is it not?


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