2023-10-20 05:43:01
A broken bicycle, diapers, a mattress, and tattered clothes litter the ground. Some, charred, still smoke. “Children were playing here yesterday,” indicates Palestinian journalist Hind Khoudary, clad in a navy blue bulletproof vest displaying, in large letters, the inscription “PRESS”. This Wednesday, October 18 in the morning, barely a dozen hours have passed since the deadly explosion at the Ahli-Arab hospital in Gaza City, for which Israelis and Palestinians blame each other.
On site, Hind Khoudary describes the field of ruins left by the attack in a video broadcast by the Turkish news agency Anadolu. His features are drawn, his voice breathless. Without doubt, the young woman has just spent another night on the bridge. “I haven’t been home for a week, and I don’t even know if my house is still standing,” she wrote on October 16 on her Instagram account.
Palestinian and based in Gaza, Hind Khoudary is one of the rare reporters working in the Palestinian enclave today. It being locked by the Jewish state, no journalist has been able to enter since the Hamas attack on October 7 once again ignited the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Even international media like France Télévisions, the BBC, CNN or France 24 do not have a special correspondent.
Three AFP cameras film Gaza constantly
A blockade which fuels suspicions about the reliability of information from the area, under Hamas control, and restricts its diversity. « We rely a lot on AFP images and also work with two of our Gazan fixers (1) », indicates the editorial director of France Télévisions, Muriel Pleynet. Thanks to its nine Gazan journalists, Agence France-Presse has established itself as a major source for many media outlets. In addition to the information collected by its employees, it can provide images filmed by three cameras. These, installed on the roof of its offices in Gaza City, at the top of a building in Rafah and on Israeli soil (pointing towards the enclave), rotate without interruption.
In this constrained journalistic landscape, certain NGOs and international organizations end up playing a media role. “Within our team of 54 people in Gaza, a colleague sends us short daily voice memos, which we make available to journalists”explains Shaina Low, communications advisor for the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), from East Jerusalem.
Two to three minute sound bites where Yousef Hammash, a trained journalist, describes the horrors of daily life at the time of the bombings. “Unable to withdraw cash”, he reported on October 16, continuing: “Half the population is homeless.” “The bodies arrive at Nasser Hospital because there is no more room in the morgue,” he explained the next day after specifying that “even journalists don’t have water”.
Lack of rest, shortages, power and internet outages
The closure of Gaza imposes some of the most grueling working conditions on journalists there. Added to the impossibility of rest and multiple shortages are power and Internet outages.
“Our correspondent manages to send about one message per day at the moment, but communication is becoming very difficult,” reports Jonathan Dagher, head of the Middle East desk of Reporters Without Borders (RSF). To the point of preventing information from leaving the Gaza Strip? Jonathan Dagher does not rule it out: “The fear of a media blackout is growing. Our correspondent herself finds it increasingly difficult to contact her sources, effectively reducing the quantity of information. »
Two Palestinian reporters, Mohammed Soboh and Said Al-Tawil, were killed in an Israeli strike on October 10 in Gaza. / Fatima Shbair/AP
The difficulties worsen over time. “Every day we do the message call to check that everyone on our team is alive, narrated by Shaina Low. At first, it took me ten minutes to get all the answers. Now it takes four to six hours. »
Thirteen journalists dead in Gaza since October 7
An expectation that leaves us fearing the worst. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), based in New York, 13 of the 17 journalists killed since October 7 are Palestinian and died in Gaza (the others, three Israelis and a Lebanese, were killed respectively in Israel and on the Lebanese border). The bombing by the Israeli army, in May 2021, of the building housing the offices of the Associated Press agency and the Qatari channel Al-Jazeera in Gaza reminds the profession that the status of journalist provides no protection.
Also the enclave is not a war zone like any other. “Even if it were possible, I don’t know if I would take the responsibility of sending someone, testifies a reporter who has covered several conflicts in Gaza. In Mosul, Ukraine, there is war, but there is always a fallback plan. In Gaza, no. You are a prisoner. »
The danger, at every moment, weighs even more heavily on journalists because it also threatens their loved ones. “At the same time as covering the news, most of our journalists are trying to evacuate their families to the Egyptian border in the hope of bringing them to safety,” explains Philip Chetwynd, AFP information director.
An additional challenge that makes their commitment even stronger. “Despite the extreme precariousness of their situation and the personal security issues they encounter, they have a real desire to show and document the catastrophe unfolding in Gaza”greets Muriel Pleynet, the editorial director of France Télévisions.
But involvement in the event can, insidiously, weaken objectivity. “Being a journalist means telling what happens to others. Telling what happens to you is no longer quite the same thing.” reminds the reporter. This emotional proximity to the information is combined with a red line: Hamas. “From Gaza, it is impossible for a local journalist to criticize him,” she continues.
Need for perspective on information
Aware of the double pitfall, the international media are taking precautions. «All the information collected in Gaza is transmitted to teams in Jerusalem and Nicosia, who interact with journalists on site and take the necessary step back to contextualize the data, also relying on information communicated by NGOs and institutions. “, specifies Philip Chetwynd, to AFP.
Beneficial, this distancing is still not enough to compensate for the absence of a complementary perspective. “It’s terrible to say: among Western opinion, the words of local journalists do not carry as much weight as those of special correspondents, adds the reporter cited above. Their work, which is essential, nevertheless has the great merit of not abandoning information to social networks. »
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The Gaza hospital, a textbook case
Tuesday, October 17, at 7:12 p.m., first “bulletin” of the AFP: “Gaza: at least 200 dead in Israeli raid on hospital compound (Hamas)”
At 9:45 p.m., Israel attributes the strike that hit the Ahli-Arab hospital to Islamic Jihad. The Palestinian group denied it shortly after.
Wednesday October 18,at 10:53 a.m.: during a trip to Tel Aviv, Joe Biden affirms that the shooting on the Gaza hospital seems to be the work of “the opposing party”.
At 2:18 p.m., the Ministry of Health (Hamas) gives the assessment of“at least 471 dead” in the strike on the hospital.
At 6:49 p.m.,“an official of a European intelligence service”quoted by AFP, affirms that the deadly shooting at the hospital caused “a few dozen dead, probably between 10 and 50”and that’“Israel probably didn’t do that.”
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