The Israeli army has assured journalists that it will not change its policies towards them in view of the recent stabbing attack on a soldier by a Palestinian man posing as a member of the press.
A Palestinian man wearing a yellow vest and a black T-shirt emblazoned with the word "PRESS", stabbed a soldier on Friday in the West Bank town of Hebron, before being shot dead by other soldiers present at the scene.
"There will be no change in the behaviour of the IDF toward the press," Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said adding, "It is being treated as an exceptional incident."
Press organisations feared that the incident could curtail freedom for the scribes and may lead to crackdown against the members of the media.
Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman, Emmanuel Nahshon, said on Saturday that the impostor had created a new security challenge.
"Until now, journalists were taken at face value and now we see that Palestinian terrorists do not hesitate to disguise themselves as journalists, and [so] we will have to be more cautious," Nachson said.
The Foreign Press Association (FPA) denounced the attack and called for a full internal investigation of the event, fearing that the impostor's actions could endanger reporters, photographers and camera operators in the field.
The Palestinian Journalists' Association echoed similar sentiments condemning the incident.
Meanwhile, violence continued unabated with an Israeli soldier killed and nine others injured in an attack carried out by an Israeli-Palestinian in the southern city of Beersheva yesterday evening.
The attacker from the southern Israeli village of Hura shot a Golani soldier and snatched his M-16 rifle opening indiscriminate firing at Be'er Sheva's central bus terminal yesterday evening.
The attacker was a 21-year-old Israeli citizen from the Bedouin village of Hura.
Israel's internal security services agency, the Shin Bet, and police have begun questioning relatives and friends of the assailant, suspecting that another person had helped him train for using the rifle.
The attacker arrived at the bus terminal armed with a knife, a gun and ammunition, and started attacking passersby. He tried to stab a woman, who sprayed him with pepper spray, before shooting at the soldier.
Security forces who were already at the station on their way home or to their bases opened fire at the attacker, who managed to escape from the bus terminal, but was then shot dead after a gun fight with security forces who arrived at the scene.
In a case of mistaken identity, an Eritrean refugee, uninvolved in the attack, was also killed after being shot by a security guard and then lynched by the mob while trying to escape the scene of the attack.
