“An attack that does not kill you makes you stronger, stronger and stronger.” Palestinian journalist Mohamed Balousha wrote this message after he was shot in the left leg while recording Israeli troop positions in Gaza City on December 15. The day before, Balousha re-transmitted to EL PAÍS through audio recordings the attacks that took place in the Sheik Redwan neighborhood. He is one of the few reporters who risk their lives daily in northern Gaza, although their recovery is unknown. This is one of the most widely watched exclusives of the war, broadcast by Emirati television Al Mashhad.
In a video from November 27th, which EL PAÍS was able to see without censorship and pixelated images, he puts a face to the shame of the conflict. This involves the discovery of at least four babies left in a state of decomposition in the intensive care unit of Al Naser Hospital, eaten by worms and flies and still attached to cables and ventilators. Two and a half weeks earlier, the facilities had been besieged, attacked and evacuated on the orders of the Israeli army. If the world can see such tragedies and those that occur daily in this Palestinian enclave, it is thanks to him and those who manage to narrate the war from within for the Palestinian and international media.
EL PAÍS contacted some of these unique witnesses to a war in which Israel denies access to the main theater, the Gaza Strip, where more than 20,000 people have died. Mohamed Balousha is currently still living there, but the number of deaths of reporters or media workers since October 7th stands at 68 (61 Palestinians, four Israelis and three Lebanese), as well as three missing people, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). More people have died in ten weeks than in any other country in an entire year, CPJ reported last Thursday.
Mahmoud, 30, is trying to rebel against the image many have that the reporter in Gaza is, by default, equipped with a shell that makes him immune to everything that happens around him. “We are treated as if we are less than human. I have every right to feel pain. I have every right to mourn my murdered family members. “I have every right to be afraid,” insists this reporter from a major international media company, who is not authorized to make statements but who agrees to speak on the condition that neither the company he works for nor his real name will be published.
Like all those interviewed, Mahmud struggles daily with the difficulties of obtaining food and water, he says from the three-story house he lives in with around 70 people in Rafah, at the southern end of the Strip, after fleeing Gaza City. Unlike other journalists, he has his own solar panel system, provided to him by his media, which makes his work easier, even if the batteries last less and less.
Priority: survive
Join EL PAÍS to follow all the news and read without restrictions.
Subscribe to
Under the guise of uncontrolled violence, the reporters covering the conflict in this open-air cage of 2.3 million people today take priority over the fulfillment of their professional duties. That priority is the odyssey of survival, as evidenced by the stories collected for this report over the past few days.
Almost all of them have fled the north to the central and southern areas of the Palestinian enclave, where they are seeking refuge in overcrowded shelters with relatives or acquaintances. Amid the brutal humanitarian crisis rocking the Gaza Strip, finding food, water or shelter is essential to obtaining transportation as informants, keeping the batteries of their electronic devices charged, and connecting to the Internet to communicate or Material to be transmitted to the media. that they will publish it.
Confirming a common phenomenon of modern wars, social networks have sparked the popularity and dissemination of the work of some Palestinian whistleblowers, such as photographer Motaz Azaiza, who narrates the conflict from the southern half of the Gaza Strip and has more than 17 million followers on Instagram. Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups broadcast their own propaganda videos but do not allow informants access to their operations or the locations where they hold hostages.
“I reported on the movement of people from the north to the south and also between cities in the south. I myself have always been one of them. Sometimes I had to walk or ride on a donkey cart to report on the stories,” explains Sami Alajrami, 55, a Gaza correspondent for the Italian agency Ansa for 12 years and who has already changed jobs seven times from his home in the north settling first in Deir el Balah in the central area and now in Rafah. At the start of the war, Alajrami says in a written statement, he paid ten times the normal price for fuel to get around and do his work. “I reported on the murder of 14 members of my family who were also displaced,” he continues, giving an idea of how impossible it is to separate the journalist from the victim, something that almost all reporters suffer from.
Since most informants are among the 1.8 million displaced residents, the situation is most complicated in the north, where only a handful remain on the ground. It is the area where the army has struck most and where there is hardly any population left. There, because no colleagues or replacements can come from outside, the journalists, some of whom are seasoned and experienced in the current conflict, are trying to move in groups amid constant fighting and bombings like the one that wounded Islam Bader in the neck Tuesday. , a freelance reporter (he works with multiple media outlets and charges per article published) who works for the Qatari network Al Araby. He was in the Yabalia refugee camp when a bomb attack killed dozens of people.
In the two-story house in Al Maghazi refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip area where 26-year-old freelance reporter Aseel Musa has sought refuge with fifty other people, there is a generator but no fuel to power it. . This prevents the house from having electricity, so she uses a neighbor's solar panels to charge the computer and phone, her most important work tools. If the car is stationary you have to move around on foot. “We rely on firewood to heat and cook water. What we have is only canned goods, pasta or rice,” explains Musa in the answers sent via voice memo.
“We journalists in Gaza are not protected and we are working in an extremely difficult situation,” laments Akram al Satarri, a 47-year-old reporter who has never seen such levels of violence, although he has covered all the wars in Gaza, since Israel evacuated the Gaza Strip in 2005. Like Alajrami and Musa, this freelance journalist also fled Gaza City to the south with his family. “I think there is no safe haven in all of Gaza,” he says from Khan Younis via phone call and voice message.
Six hours of crawling with two balls
“Two bullets hit me in the leg and I fell to the ground. After six hours, I crawled to the second floor, where I had a first aid kit that I used to stop the bleeding. (…) A friend came to me with four others and they transported me on a wooden plank two or three kilometers to the nearest medical station,” said Mohamed Balousha in a message.
Journalists in the Palestinian enclave “have paid and continue to pay an unprecedented price and face exponential threats.” Many have lost colleagues, families and media institutions and have fled in search of safety when there is no safe haven or way out said Sherif Mansour, CPJ coordinator in the region.
With the death of informants comes threats, arrests, censorship and the loss of one's own family members. “The main problem as a journalist in Gaza is that I don't feel safe. “Israel is attacking journalists and their families,” laments Aseel Musa, who has lost six relatives in the current conflict and also complains about the threats and insults he receives through his social network profiles. Mahmoud, who has killed numerous family members, acquaintances and colleagues in these weeks, is receiving threats from “Israeli settlers who want to kill me, rape my wife or murder my son, with the intention of stopping my work or intimidating me.”
One of the latest reporter fatalities was Al Jazeera cameraman Samer Abudaqa, who was hit by the projectile fired from an Israeli drone. His rescue could not be carried out for hours due to the fierce attacks and he died, according to the network's version, and his companion, Wael al Dahdouh, was injured in the same bombing. Al Dahdouh had already lost his wife, a son, a daughter and a grandson in another Israeli attack in October, but within hours he was back in front of the camera.
“It is very important to understand that we are also victims of this conflict and that they can and do kill us,” emphasizes Mahmud. Yet despite the determination and strength of colleagues like Al Dahdouh, he insists: “We are not machines.” I mean, we have feelings and sometimes cry, but we are almost always treated like machines. And in any case, we have to get the job done in the end.”
Follow all international information on Facebook and Xor in our weekly newsletter.
Limited time special offer
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limits
_