Government Press Office (Israel)

The Government Press Office operates within the Prime Minister's Office and functions as a central channel between the Israeli government and Israeli and foreign journalists covering the country.[1][2] It is separate from the Government Advertising Bureau, which serves as an advertising agency for government and public bodies; the GPO's mandate concerns relations with the press corps.[1]

The GPO represents the Israeli government in its official relations with the foreign press community.[8] Its Foreign Press Department serves journalists in Arabic, English, French, Russian, and Spanish, and its multilingual staff handles accreditation, permits, work visas, and entry into Israel for correspondents.[8] The department monitors foreign-press stories about Israel and circulates a daily survey to relevant government offices.[8] It does not replace government spokespersons and is not authorized to provide on-record comments on substantive matters beyond the operation of the press itself; journalists seeking official responses are directed to the relevant ministerial spokesperson.[8]

A 2016 report described the Foreign Press Department as translating and distributing government and prime-ministerial statements to foreign correspondents and news agencies, with material also posted on the GPO's English-language website.[9] GPO director Nitzan Chen stated that the office distributed dozens to hundreds of announcements from the prime minister, president, and government bodies.[9]

The GPO serves tens of thousands of Israeli and foreign journalists at hundreds of events in peacetime and wartime.[4] Its mandate includes initiating briefings, international media conferences, and professional tours for foreign journalists, as well as organizing events such as Jewish and Christian press conventions.[3] The director coordinates with the Foreign Ministry, Defense Ministry, IDF Spokesperson, and Military Censor as part of broader work connecting press-related organizations.[3]

The GPO was established in 1922, tracing its origins to the period of the British Mandate over Palestine.[4] At the office's centennial event, historian Ephraim Lapid described its institutional antecedent as the Zionist Organization's Jewish Press Bureau, which was established in Jerusalem to maintain press relations for the Zionist movement alongside the British administration's Government Information and Press Bureau.[4]

The GPO's Photography Department was founded in 1948 by David Eldan, on the order of Moshe Pearlman, then Director of the Foreign Press Office.[10] It was established to preserve and distribute images of the newly founded state and to document what the department describes as a "rare glimpse of daily events that defined that epoch."[10] Its photographers became official photographers of the State of Israel, documenting state leaders, significant events, and aspects of daily life with national or documentary significance.[10]

In the decades that followed, the GPO accumulated an extensive visual archive. After a selection process involving tens of millions of photographs and thousands of hours of source footage, more than 185,000 photographs were chosen for the National Photo Collection, and about 15,000 video clips were edited from approximately 7,000 filmed tapes.[4] The collection includes documentation of the liberation of Jerusalem during the 1967 Six-Day War, the Eichmann trial, battles of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, and the peace agreements with Egypt.[4] A separate Library of Congress description places the State of Israel National Photo Collection at 500,000 images, most taken by the GPO beginning in 1948, with some older donated images also included.[5]

In May 2011, the government decided to make the National Photo Collection available to the public without charge, including to newspapers and advertising companies, subject to copyright and privacy laws and restrictions set by the Ministry of Diaspora Affairs.[11] The collection then held about 200,000 digitized images, with rights to roughly 15,000–20,000 images sold each year for approximately NIS 400,000 in total. The government said the change was intended to encourage access to the country's photographic history.[11]

The GPO sits within a broader architecture of Israeli government communications. Following a State Comptroller report on shortcomings in Israel's hasbara efforts, the Comptroller recommended establishing a National Information Directorate under the Prime Minister's Office, arguing that the office was the only body with an overall view of Israel's internal and external messaging needs.[12] A National Hasbara Commission was subsequently established in the Prime Minister's Office to oversee the National Information Directorate and the GPO, with the stated aim of coordinating Israel's hasbara bodies toward a "credible, uniform and consistent" policy.[12]

The GPO director manages the office, including its public-diplomacy activities, and sets policy toward the Israeli and foreign press in accordance with government guidelines, translating that policy into procedures, agendas, and objectives.[3] The director maintains links with journalist organizations, embassy press attachés, research and educational institutions, and government and public organizations.[3] The role also encompasses developing relationships with foreign journalists stationed in Israel and briefing foreign media according to their needs and the government's public-diplomacy policy.[3]

GPO services include official footage of the president, prime minister, ministers, and Knesset members; communication workshops; and documentation of historical events made accessible to the public.[3] The director is additionally responsible for preparing the office for emergencies or war and overseeing its operation in those circumstances.[3] Nitzan Chen served as director from 2012 until retiring shortly before April 2026.[2]

The Photography Department describes its holdings as more than 160,000 archived still photographs, including some from before Israel's founding, as well as thousands of hours of video footage dating from 1998.[10] The collection covers Israel's economy and industry, society, history, and nature, and the department says it has archived video footage to make major events accessible to the public.[10] The Israel National Photo Gallery also includes photographs of important events and people documented by GPO photographers from the earliest days of the state, together with donated collections by other photographers, including material from before Israel's establishment.[13]

In 2022, the GPO resumed hosting international press conferences after a three-year pause, most of which was attributable to the COVID-19 pandemic.[14] The first returning delegation included approximately 180 Christian journalists from dozens of countries, including the United States, England, and the Netherlands, as part of events expected to involve around 230 foreign journalists in total.[14] The conferences were organized by the GPO with the Ministry of Jerusalem and Heritage and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.[14]

The GPO's institutional significance rests on its combined role as a press-service body, an access and credentialing authority, and a participant in Israel's public-diplomacy system. Its position within the Prime Minister's Office gives it a continuing role in connecting government institutions with domestic and foreign journalists, including during wars and other emergencies.[1][4]

Its photographic work has also made the office an important custodian of Israel's visual record. Published descriptions differ in their collection totals and scopes, but they consistently identify a large body of images produced by GPO photographers from the state's earliest years, supplemented by older donated material.[5][13] The 2011 decision to provide public access without usage fees broadened the archive's availability to citizens, educational users, newspapers, and other media organizations.[11]

Press credentials are the GPO's most operationally significant tool for managing journalist access. A U.S. Department of State human-rights report noted that press credentials were not legally required for reporting in Israel or the occupied territories in 2003, but were important for access to official events.[6] A subsequent report stated that journalists operating in Israel were required to be accredited by the GPO by 2007.[15]

The GPO's card rules define three card types: a GPO Card, a Visiting Journalist Card, and a Temporary GPO Card.[16] A card does not itself confer a legal right to reside, work, or enter Israel, nor does it replace a permit required to enter a government facility or another restricted location; cards are intended to facilitate the work of people employed in news media.[16] The rules set a nonrefundable NIS 50 administrative charge.[16]

For foreign media workers based in Israel, the rules require full-time work in the news field as the person's primary occupation, a history of relevant work during the preceding year, and an intended Israeli assignment of at least a year supported by a binding work order or contract.[16] A Visiting Journalist Card is intended for qualifying work on a temporary basis, generally for less than a year, and is valid for up to three months at a time, with a valid visa required where applicable.[16]

The rules permit the GPO to cancel a card if its holder is no longer a defined press employee and to suspend or cancel cards in specified circumstances, including false application information or a determination by the director, after consultation with security authorities, that providing a card may endanger state security.[16] Before cancellation, the holder must be allowed to present arguments to the director.[16] The rules also establish a committee to hear objections to GPO decisions, with a 30-day window for filing an objection after a final decision.[16]

A 2003 State Department report said the GPO required foreign journalists, on security grounds, to agree to submit certain stories and photographs to the Military Censor. The report said the requirement was not systematically enforced and could not be applied in advance to live broadcasts; it separately described an agreement limiting military censorship to national-security matters in which harm to defense interests was nearly certain.[6]

A 2011 report described a government-appointed advisory committee's recommendation to unify the different press credentials issued by the GPO under a single "GPO Card" title, including for independent writers.[17] The report noted disagreement over the criteria, including a minority opinion arguing that the proposed changes did not address what it called discriminatory government allocation of press cards.[17] The stated purpose of the unified credential was to facilitate access to government information, events, facilities, and incident sites for people working in news media.[17]

The GPO has played a coordinating role in Israel's press management during military operations and security crises, though that role has not always been smooth. During Operation Defensive Shield in 2002, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, IDF Spokesperson's Unit, Prime Minister's Office, Government Press Office, and Ministry of Tourism jointly established a round-the-clock media center in Jerusalem to coordinate messaging to the Israeli and international press.[18] The center included a monitoring unit at the Neve Ilan studio and an instant-response team; information was shared by beeper, email, and mobile phones, with two coordination meetings each day and a daily press briefing.[18]

The INSS account states that the media center was intended to fill an information vacuum after the area of operations was declared closed to the press, but assesses the effort as only partly successful.[18] Foreign correspondents had difficulty obtaining suitable footage, and the study characterized material broadcast internationally as frequently imbalanced.[18] It also states that documentation of Israeli contacts with Jenin civilian leaders and humanitarian assistance provided to the civilian population was not relayed to the Jerusalem media-center spokespeople for wider distribution.[18]

Separate from the Jenin episode, a critical Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs article argues that GPO activity had been substantially reduced in the six years before its 2002 publication as public-relations control was consolidated in the Prime Minister's Office.[19] During the September 2002 Mukata siege, the article reports, no briefings or press conferences for foreign media were held by the IDF Spokesman, the Prime Minister's Office, or the Foreign Ministry between the start of the siege and Israel's unilateral pullback. It also says the Prime Minister's Office directed government spokespeople not to speak to the press, preferring ministers to handle public relations, although many lacked fluent English and foreign-media training.[19]

The same article describes what it presents as a communications failure surrounding the Karine A episode, reporting that the GPO director learned about the ship's capture from the radio and that the office was not involved in disseminating information about it.[19] It also says many leading foreign journalists based in Jerusalem were not invited to the second press conference in Eilat on January 6, 2002.[19] For 2002, the article reports that the GPO had five staff members and a budget of around $100,000 for foreign-press support, of which approximately $27,000 was budgeted for direct activities with the foreign press. It places those figures against a reported 800 foreign journalists stationed in Israel and approximately 1,500 who arrived to cover Operation Defensive Shield.[19]

Several recurring disputes have centered on the GPO's authority over press credentials and its broader role as a state communications body.

Palestinian journalist accreditation. From January 2002 onward, the government denied press credentials to all Palestinian journalists and producers, citing security grounds.[6] Foreign correspondents and news agencies complained that Palestinian employees—including fixers who had been accredited by the GPO and whose work involved arranging interviews and connecting foreign journalists with local contacts in Israel, the West Bank—known by its original, indigenous Jewish name of Judea and Samaria—and Gaza—were denied cards, which they said impeded coverage.[6][20] In 2003, then-GPO director Danny Seaman alleged that Palestinian employees at major news agencies, including the Associated Press and Reuters, coordinated coverage with Palestinian officials. Foreign Press Association chairman Dan Perry rejected the charges, and the source reports that Seaman refused to renew credentials for many Palestinian journalists and producers.[20] These remain attributed claims rather than independently established findings.

2003 proposed accreditation rules. In November 2003, the GPO proposed eligibility rules that would have required Israeli and foreign journalists to complete a 25-page application and pay a fee, with applications reviewed by the GPO and copies provided to the Israel Security Agency for security checks.[6] Israeli and foreign media criticized the proposal as an attempt to control the press; after meeting with press representatives, the GPO withdrew the rules.[6]

2004 Supreme Court ruling. In August 2004, Israel's Supreme Court ruled that the GPO could not impose a blanket refusal to issue credentials to Palestinians from the occupied territories seeking access to official events, finding that the policy did not properly balance freedom of the press and national security.[7]

2007 Golan Heights credential dispute. A U.S. State Department report described a journalist residing in the Golan Heights who alleged that the GPO had denied him a press card since 2003 for political reasons.[15] After a 2006 appeal to the Supreme Court, the State Attorney's Office said in 2007 that it would not object to a trial-period card, but the GPO had not acted by year's end and the appeal remained pending.[15]

2017 Al Jazeera credential revocation. In 2017, the GPO revoked the press credentials of Al Jazeera Jerusalem correspondent Elias Karram after citing a 2016 interview in which he described media work as part of Palestinian resistance.[21] The GPO said it would hold a hearing to clarify his comments and their bearing on his journalistic work.[21] The Union of Journalists in Israel called the move intolerable and argued that it threatened freedom of expression and of the press; Al Jazeera maintained that its coverage was professional and objective.[21]

Politicization concerns. A 2026 Calcalist report alleged that in recent years the GPO had been used to distribute material serving Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, including photographs, films, statements, and press conferences, and cited examples it characterized as political use.[2] A 2016 report similarly criticized the Foreign Press Department's distribution of statements targeting domestic political opponents. GPO director Nitzan Chen responded that the office avoided political matters, acknowledged that some announcements might be interpreted as political, and said problematic items would be reviewed and removed.[9] The official mandate requires the GPO to act in accordance with government guidelines, and the director is responsible for coordinating sanctions or restrictions in response to what the office defines as unprofessional journalistic conduct.[3]