Nearly three weeks after the Hamas attack, Israel continues to bomb the Gaza Strip and causes numerous civilian deaths. Palestinian journalists have also lost their lives doing their work.
For the Palestine Media Agency, it has been the same routine since Israel launched the complete siege of the Gaza Strip, in response to the massive Hamas attack. Every day, this Parisian agency calls the Gazan journalists it supports to find out their news. She tries to make their work known and to help them.
Israel has bombed more than 7,000 targets believed to harbor Hamas positions. The Gazan civilian population is the first victim of these bombings with more than 6,500 dead, according to local authorities linked to Hamas. And among this population in permanent danger of death, there are a few dozen Palestinian journalists who try to inform the world about what their territory endures. Roshdi Sarraj, a 31-year-old fixer who worked with Radio France correspondents and special correspondents since May 2021, was killed in an Israeli bombing last Sunday October 22 in Gaza.
“It’s always the same fear, knowing if tomorrow they will be alive. Since the start of the Israeli bombings, there have been more than 21 Palestinian journalists who have been murdered in Gaza, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.”, explains Imen Habib of the Palestine Media Agency. Around fifty buildings housing editorial offices were destroyed by Israeli raids.
“The Israeli government prevents journalists from being able to do their work in the Gaza Strip”
Imen Habib, from Media Palestine Agencyat franceinfo
“Besides, the Israeli authorities do not allow international journalists to go to the Gaza Strip to document what is happening,” she emphasizes, convinced that the media are specifically targeted. In the Gaza Strip, only Palestinian journalists can still work at the risk of their lives as the Israeli bombings are on an unprecedented scale.
Iyad Alasttal, journalist and director, lives in Khan Younès in the south of the enclave. He says he has already lost 96 members of his extended family to Israeli bombs. “A journalist today in Gaza, if he is lucky enough to return home alive, he also returns with a lot of shock. He struggles to find water, to have time with his children and we have no not even gas for the car, to go cover the shocking news in the Gaza Strip”he describes.
Like many other NGOs present on the ground in Gaza, the Palestine Media Agency is calling for an immediate ceasefire and the opening of the enclave to journalists from the international press. So that the world can measure the extent of the tragedy playing out there.