In Gaza City, where famine has been declared and residents are braced for a massive new assault by Israel’s military, the international press corp is nowhere to be seen, excluded from bearing witness to an unfolding human catastrophe.
Israel’s seal around the Gaza Strip has been so effective in denying overseas journalists access to the conflict zone that there should be fears it will become a blueprint for other regimes to prevent independent reporting on wars in the future.
Despite intense international pressure, Israel refuses to drop its draconian strategy, which gives it greater control over the news narrative. It then exploits the international media’s dependence on Palestinian correspondents to cast aspersions on the impartiality of their reports.
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, Israel has targeted and assassinated at least 26 journalists after making unsubstantiated claims of their links to Hamas. More than 200 media workers have died in Gaza, more than in any other conflict, says Reporters Without Borders. Israel denies deliberately targeting journalists.
For audiences, the concept of a media blackout is hard to fathom in an information age where any significant moment can be filmed on a phone and instantly put online. We are accustomed to the idea of the indefatigable war correspondent who overcomes any obstacle to reach the frontlines.
The BBC’s John Simpson memorably wore a burqa to enter Taliban-controlled Afghanistan in 2001. During World War One, war correspondent Dorothy Lawrence dressed as a soldier in the trenches on the Somme. In 2023, Sky News reporter Stuart Ramsay eluded a media blockade to report undercover on the civil war in Myanmar.
Such derring-do is unfeasible in Gaza. “There have been other conflicts where journalists have not been welcome on the battlefield but there has been a way round it,” says Jonathan Levy, head of Sky News. “This is different. It’s the geography, the logistics, the way that Gaza is now locked down.”
There is palpable frustration among seasoned war correspondents at being unable to report on the ground from a historic crisis. More than 1,000 journalists – including the BBC’s Lyse Doucet, Sky’s Alex Crawford and Channel 4 News’s Lindsey Hilsum – have signed a petition calling on Israel to let them in. “The longer Gaza remains sealed off, the more global press blackouts become the norm,” they warn.
Brazilian photojournalist André Liohn, who started the petition, told me: “Independent media on the ground are essential to establish facts early, develop the precise vocabulary needed for future accountability, and prevent the truth from becoming the exclusive property of the powerful.”
In an accompanying letter, petitioners pledged support for professional colleagues who “by any legitimate means, independently, collectively, or in co-ordination with humanitarian or civil society actors, choose to enter Gaza without the consent of the [belligerent] parties involved”.
But in Gaza, the borders are shut and journalists are in the line of fire. “It’s a total blockade,” says Martin Roux, head of the crisis desk at Reporters Without Borders, identifying the unique nature of this conflict. “What we are seeing in the Gaza Strip is a different scenario. We are not talking about any army, but an army that has killed over 200 of our colleagues, some in targeted and claimed strikes.”
Soon after Israel began its military operation, CNN’s Clarissa Ward slipped into Gaza with an Emirati medical team and visited a field hospital. The BBC’s Jeremy Bowen recently accompanied a Jordanian aid airlift and reported that Israel prevented the filming of Gaza’s ruins from the plane’s windows.
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“Israel will not allow reporters like myself to enter Gaza to report the story and they don’t want us to see it – to film it anyway – from above either.”
Two journalists who accompanied the activist Greta Thunberg on a Gaza-bound aid boat were arrested and deported after the vessel was intercepted by Israel’s military in June.
At the start of the conflict, the BBC had staff on the ground in Gaza. They have been evacuated amid escalating safety concerns and it now relies on trusted freelancers.
For the remaining Palestinian journalists left in Gaza, the pressures are intolerable. They fear being targeted following this month’s deliberate killing by Israel of the Al-Jazeera journalist Anas al-Sharif. Five of his colleagues died in the attack. Many Palestinian journalists – like other Gazans – are fighting starvation.
The UK is among 27 countries backing a Media Freedom Coalition demand for immediate access to Gaza for foreign news outlets. But the Foreign Press Association has been petitioning the Israeli High Court to that end since the start of the conflict.
Israel, which faces a slew of complaints to the International Criminal Court over its targeted killings of journalists, shows no desire to invite independent scrutiny of its actions. “The danger,” argues Levy, “is that other countries look at this and think that it has worked.”
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