Nine Palestinian employees of Agence France Presse (AFP) are stranded, like dozens of other journalists, in the Gaza Strip. To demonstrate their solidarity and urge the Israeli authorities to ensure their security as well as to authorize them to leave Palestinian territory, journalists from the Paris office, the agency’s headquarters, held up the portraits of their Gazan colleagues this Wednesday, January 17. Photographs of the latter had also been plastered on the windows of the building located on Place de Bourse, in Paris (2nd arrondissement).
Under a light rain, around a hundred people gathered this Wednesday morning on the various balconies of the building for several minutes, in silence. The movement, initiated by journalists, was followed in several other AFP offices around the world.
Since October 7 and the attack by the Hamas terrorist group in Israel which led to the death of around 1,140 people in the Hebrew state, the Palestinian land has been cut off from the world. Nothing enters or leaves without permission from Jerusalem. The blockaded territory is shelled by its army, the Tsahal, which also carries out land operations there. Aid is trickling in, evacuations of civilians are sporadic and the humanitarian situation is catastrophic. This response cost the lives of 24,448 people in the Gaza Strip, according to Hamas.
The fighting does not spare journalists either: since the start of the war, 79 have been killed while exercising their profession. And on Thursday, November 2, the AFP office in the Gaza Strip was seriously damaged by a strike. The Israeli army had claimed that it had not carried out an operation on the AFP building, the only one of the three major international news agencies to have a “live video” transmitting live images from Gaza City. The building of the agency, which asked Israel to open an investigation, was unoccupied at the time.
The AFP employees in Gaza – eight men and one woman – have “some of them have been working with us for years, sometimes decades,” explains the agency’s information director Phil Chetwynd to Le Figaro. journalists Mahmud Hams, Yahya Hassouna, Bilal al-Sabbagh, Mohammed Abed, Saïd Khatib, Adel Zaanounn, Mai Yaghi, technician Ahmed Eissa and administrator Mohanad Shahwan, are currently in the south of the Gaza Strip, where civilians were ordered to surrender by the Israeli army.
“They are unwell and exhausted. Many of them and their families are in a state of shock. They lost friends, loved ones, their homes were destroyed. They need to be able to take shelter, warns Phil Chetwynd. Not only do they do their job as journalists, continuing to provide us with reports, images and videos, but they also have to take care of their families, looking for food, as the humanitarian situation deteriorates.”
“We renew our call to the Israeli authorities to ensure that journalists in Gaza can work safely. It is also essential that all journalists be allowed to enter and leave Gaza freely,” insisted Phil Chetwynd, who regrets the idea that Palestinian journalists “are necessarily linked to Hamas.” Contacts are also established by French authorities and third countries.
Previously, depending on previous conflicts between the Jewish state and Hamas, journalists could leave and enter the enclave. In June 2018, Palestinian AFP photographer Mohammed Abed al-Baba was injured in the leg by a shot from Israeli lines while he was covering a demonstration on the border between the Gaza Strip and the Hebrew State. “We were able to get him out to have surgery,” the agency’s journalists remember. “But today, everything is blocked on the side of Israel and Egypt,” regrets Phil Chetwynd. However, there is no question of closing the agency’s office in the Gaza Strip, which will resume “normal activity as soon as circumstances permit”.