The campaign includes briefing e-mails rebuffing Palestinian "lies" and mobile phone text messages keeping reporters up to date with the latest news.

At the centre, journalists get easy access to spokesmen, official briefings on just about anything, computer and telephone facilities and teams of friendly staff ready to help.

"It is mainly aimed at journalists who are visiting and are not based here. From what I hear, it is a well-run operation," says Eric Salerno, the correspondent in Jerusalem for Italy's Il Messaggero newspaper for the past seven years.

"They are giving people what they want in terms of access to spokesmen and interviews."

The director of the media centre is Arye Mekel, a former journalist and a spokesman for the foreign ministry.


Weapons and equipment used by suicide bombers are on view

"We've been planning this for several months. We knew that eventually something would happen that would bring many foreign journalists to Israel, whether it was to be Iraqi missiles or a problem with the Palestinians," Mr Mekel told BBC News Online.

"This is a very dramatic case of the media war or the public opinion war being as important as the real war.

"Our ability to fight this war - which we believe is essential - depends on not having too much criticism in the media and by governments which could limit the time we have to destroy the terror infrastructure. This is part of the national effort."

However, some of the material available at the media centre is heavy-handed and crude propaganda.

One video called Unholy Asylum cuts between peaceful scenes at the Church of the Nativity, Palestinians militants firing guns and marching, and the victims of suicide bombings.

Displays of death

Its narration runs: "These same Palestinians who commit barbaric acts of terrorism in Israel are now hiding behind the walls of this most sacred church, desecrating its sanctity and hindering its clergy in their religious practices, armed with the deadly weapon of explosives that they have used so many times before to kill and maim innocent civilians, cynically exploiting Israeli respect for the sites holy to all religions."

The media centre also houses an exhibition of the harnesses suicide bombers use to carry their explosives and wigs they use for disguise.



It was a deliberate policy to keep the press out of Jenin... they knew what they were doing

Veteran reporter Eric Silver
On one wall, mimicking wanted posters, is a line of eight images of captured and killed "terrorists", with their names, ages and alleged crimes.

There is also a display of weapons captured from Palestinians.

Above this hangs a poster made up of the pictures of the victims of Palestinian attacks. One detail on the poster - the number of the dead - is easily updated.

There is, though, no question that getting the message across has been a struggle.

Images of the devastated landscape of Jenin and of tanks on the streets of Ramallah are difficult to counter with arguments by spokesmen.

Recently, Israel made an official complaint to CNN over what it sees as coverage biased towards the Palestinians. That the international media is pro-Palestinian is a widely held view.

"I know that there has never been a meeting at a broadcast organisation or newspaper where they say, 'OK, let's get Israel'," Mr Mekel said.

"However there are some characteristics of the media which play against us. For example, the media by its nature always sympathises with the underdog."

Media suspicions

Possibly the most damaging aspect of the recent Israeli campaign in the West Bank, from a public relations point of view, has been the refusal to allow journalists and humanitarian agencies into Jenin for nearly two weeks.


"Wanted" posters show captured and killed Palestinians

The suspicion was that Israel had something to hide, and Palestinian accounts of brutal behaviour by the Israeli Defence Forces and large numbers of unarmed civilian dead gained currency.

"It was a deliberate policy to keep the press out of Jenin," Eric Silver, a correspondent in Israel for most of the past 30 years, told BBC News Online.

"They didn't want reporters to get in the army's way. They knew they would be criticised. They knew what they were doing - it was a hard-headed decision.

"If it turns out that there was a massacre in the sense of 100 unarmed civilians being killed - and the jury is still out on this - then the restrictions on journalists will backfire on them," Mr Silver said.

Eric Salerno agreed that the restrictions on journalists and aid workers had been very damaging, but says that criticism may not be fair.

Areas blocked

"We are used to getting access. When we don't, we don't like it. But when you think about it, having access to both sides in a war, as we did here, is very rare," Mr Salerno said.

"In the Gulf War, the Americans said to journalists, 'You sit there until we call you, and when we do we will show you around'.

"In this case, there were some journalists in Ramallah all along, though the army did come close to throwing them out."

Now that the fighting has almost completely died down, the "military closed zones" have been lifted - at least officially.

Many journalists have found themselves blocked from or thrown out of Palestinian areas that are officially open.

Checkpoints are often closed for most of the daylight hours without any given reason, and the only way to get into a city like Jenin or Ramallah is often on a tour by the Israeli Defence Forces.