AN award-winning Sunday Times journalist has been barred from entering Israel for security reasons.

Hala Jaber, a leading Arab reporter with contacts throughout the Middle East, flew into Tel Aviv airport last Wednesday morning aboard a British Airways flight. Her passport was checked against computer records and her press credentials were examined.

An official asked Jaber for her seat number and her boarding pass, and sent the details by radio to a colleague. She was told further checks were necessary and taken to another room.

Keeping her passport, immigration authorities searched her, checked her shoes and emptied the contents of her suitcase.

After a short wait, Jaber was told she was being denied access to Israel because of security concerns and was being sent back to London. The authorities kept Jaber’s computer, her telephone headset and her hairdryer.

Three hours after arriving, Jaber, who was Amnesty International Journalist of the Year in 2003, was escorted onto the same British Airways plane and given her passport, in which was written “entry denied”.

Tom Clark, a British field worker with a variety of charities in Israel, was also deported. An interior ministry official claimed Clark was involved in illegal activities. Clark, whose work specialises in peace and reconciliation, had been kept overnight in a cell at the airport.

Jaber’s possessions, apart from the headset, were returned to Britain later in the week.

A spokesman for the office of Ariel Sharon, the prime minister, declined to comment but the Israeli foreign ministry said the case was being investigated.

Jaber said: “So much for freedom of the press — they claim to be the only democratic country in the region and this sort of behaviour makes them as bad as their neighbours.” o British security experts are working on a secret plan to bolster the Palestinian security services in an attempt to avert chaos when Israeli forces withdraw from the Gaza Strip later this year.