A group of French journalists have written an open letter calling on Israel and Egypt to allow international correspondents to enter the Gaza Strip to report on the situation there.
The Palestinian territory has been cut off from the outside world since the deadly Hamas terror attack on southern Israel on October 7, which killed 1,400 people and took more than 220 hostages, most of them civilians.
International journalists can usually enter and leave the Gaza Strip from Israel through the heavily fortified Erez border crossing, which is operated by the Israeli military.
The only requirement is that they have a press pass issued by the Israeli government’s press agency.
The crossing was heavily damaged by Hamas on October 7 and is now closed to all non-military personnel as Israel steps up its bombing and ground attacks to wipe out Hamas and recover the hostages.
The Rafah border crossing from the Gaza Strip to Egypt is also closed to passenger traffic, and only limited aid shipments are sent in and out after inspection by Israeli forces.
“After a blockade of 16 years, Gaza has been under total siege since October 10. “No one is allowed to enter or leave the Palestinian territory,” the letter reads.
“We were able to collect reports from the victims of the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7. We must be able to work in security and learn what is going on in Gaza.”
They noted that international correspondents were allowed into the area during the 2014 Gaza war, in which Israel launched Operation Protective Edge.
“In the summer of 2014, the Israeli army opened access to the international press, thereby guaranteeing our freedom of information. This is no longer the case… Let’s go to Gaza to practice our profession. We understand the risks,” the letter said.
The message was signed by the journalists’ committees of almost all major French news outlets and by thirty individual journalists with experience in reporting on the Middle East conflict. It was published on the websites of the French publications Mediapart, Libération, Politis, Orient XXI and l’Orient le jour.
About the initiative in an interview with the French international news channel France 24, the independent journalist Céline Martelet said that conflicts on both sides should be reported independently and first-hand.
“In 2014, some of us were inside. We took turns,” she said.
The task of documenting the situation on the ground was given to the 1,200 Palestinian journalists in the Gaza Strip who work for local, regional and international media.
According to Gaza health authorities, an unprecedented number of Gazan journalists have been killed in the latest wave of violence, while many have also lost family members in the Israeli airstrikes that have killed more than 8,000 people. Israel refutes this figure, but did not provide an alternative estimate.
According to the Brussels International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) on October 26, at least 23 Palestinian journalists were killed, several injured and others missing.
The consortium called for greater efforts to ensure the safety of journalists and an independent investigation into the deaths so far. The consortium said it feared the death toll within the Gaza media community would rise as the Israeli military operation expanded.
“If those who are our eyes and ears disappear, we will be deaf and blind, and Gaza will become an information blackout, an Israeli media blackout, to use Reporters Without Borders’ phrase,” the letter said.
Source: Deadline
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