The deadly risks of reporting in Gaza

The Israeli strikes that killed five journalists in a Gaza Strip hospital on Monday were the latest episode in what has been an incredibly deadly conflict for Palestinian journalists, who have often served as the world’s on-the-ground witnesses to Israel’s campaign.

“It’s reached the point where I’m scared to report,” said Gevara al-Safadi, a photographer who works with Al-Kofiya, a Palestinian broadcaster. Such fears and the deadly risks of reporting in Gaza could further stifle the amount of information coming out of the war.

Israel has barred international journalists from freely entering Gaza to cover the war and has killed some Palestinian reporters, whom it claimed were members of Hamas or other groups. More than 190 media workers, the great majority of them Palestinian, have been killed since the war began in October 2023, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

The episode Monday began after Israel first struck Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza, hitting one of the journalists, said Abdullah al-Attar, a freelance journalist who was present. As other reporters and emergency medical workers rushed to the scene, Israeli forces struck again, killing a total of 20 people and wounding several others, health officials said. Al-Attar’s account was corroborated by the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Five of those killed were journalists who had worked as contractors for The Associated Press, Reuters, Al Jazeera and Middle East Eye. The Israeli military said the strikes were intended to hit a camera that Israeli troops believed was tracking them.

The conflict has been exceptionally deadly for Palestinians in Gaza as a whole: More than 60,000 people, including thousands of children and other noncombatants, have been killed, according to local health officials. 

Alongside its military campaign in Gaza, the Israeli government has waged a relentless battle to control the narrative about the fighting. In addition to only allowing international journalists who are accompanied by the military into Gaza, it has disputed the motives and objectivity of many Palestinian reporters working inside the enclave.

“Israel doesn’t want the world to see the magnitude of what’s happening here,” al-Astal said.

Asked for comment on the rationale behind the ban on allowing international media to freely report in Gaza, Nadav Shoshani, an Israeli military spokesperson, said it was “security-related.” He did not respond to a request for more details.

Like almost every other person in Gaza, Palestinian reporters have been forced to repeatedly flee for their lives and have struggled to provide food for their families amid widespread shortages and hunger. At times, they have also had to report on the deaths of friends, colleagues, and loved ones.

“They are subject to the same kind of horrific deprivation that the rest of the Gazan population is subject to,” said Jodie Ginsberg, the head of the Committee to Protect Journalists. “They are constantly displaced. They are working from housing that is extremely precarious.”

Unlike journalists reporting from other combat zones, Palestinian reporters in Gaza cannot leave the front lines to rest and recover. Israel and Egypt let almost no one out of the enclave except for aid workers, dual nationals and the severely sick or wounded.

“When I’m working and the military orders us to evacuate, I have to scramble to find us a new place to live,” al-Safadi said. “You’re working as a journalist, but you also have to support your displaced family.”

Al-Safadi has been caught in the crossfire. In late July, an Israeli airstrike hit a nearby home in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood of Gaza City, wounding him and his young daughter with shrapnel, he said.

“There’s a lot of fear, and there’s no protection,” he added.

At times, the Israeli military has also deliberately attacked and killed Palestinian reporters it claimed belonged to the Qassam Brigades. Several were employees of Al Jazeera, a Qatari-owned broadcaster, which called the allegations baseless.

One of them was Anas al-Sharif, 28, a reporter for Al Jazeera who had become a familiar face to people across the Arab world as one of the last journalists in northern Gaza, much of which has been razed by Israeli forces. Al-Sharif contributed to a Pulitzer Prize-winning set of photos submitted by Reuters in 2024 for coverage of the Israel-Hamas war.

Earlier this month, the Israeli military struck a tent housing Al Jazeera journalists in Gaza City, killing al-Sharif. 

Israel never accused the other three Al Jazeera journalists and two freelancers killed alongside al-Sharif of having ties to Hamas. 

  This article originally appeared in The New York Times.