Major global news organizations are calling on Israel to lift restrictions on humanitarian aid entering the Gaza Strip and on the movement of reporters in and out of the enclave as Palestinian reporters there struggle to survive amid extreme privation.
International leaders and humanitarian organizations have sounded alarms about Gaza’s rapidly worsening hunger crisis, which has led to dozens of hunger-related deaths this month, according to the local health authorities.
Now news organizations, including The New York Times, have also begun weighing in, noting that Israel has restricted international reporters from independently entering the enclave during the war and that local reporters are trapped there without enough food to live or work.
“Reporting from any conflict zone is a risky and brave pursuit that ultimately performs a global public service,” Philip Pan, the international editor of The Times, said in a statement on Sunday. “Adding the threat of food deprivation and even starvation to these risks is deeply concerning.”
Mr. Pan said that Times journalists in Gaza “face difficulty finding food and ensuring safe freedom of movement in order to do their jobs.” The news organization has supported appeals to the Israeli Supreme Court for safe and increased access to Gaza, he said. It has also evacuated a number of journalists and their families.
The Times, Mr. Pan said, “will continue to push for journalists to be allowed to work securely and without fear or hesitation in Gaza.”
The Foreign Press Association in Israel, a nonprofit that represents hundreds of journalists from more than 100 news outlets, has long sought permission for journalists to enter Gaza, but it has been deterred by the government and the Supreme Court.
On Friday, dozens of members of the International News Safety Institute, a nonprofit group, issued a statement calling on Israel to allow journalists in Gaza who are facing starvation to leave the enclave, and for international reporters to be allowed entry. Signatories included The Washington Post, The Financial Times and The Guardian.
“Israel must allow other journalists into Gaza,” the statement said. “Nearly two years into the war, no international media have been permitted to independently enter. As local reporters are killed, face the threat of starvation, or try to flee, the world will be systematically cut off from witnessing what is happening. This cannot be allowed to happen.”
Some journalists have been allowed to enter Gaza with the Israeli military, but most reporting from the enclave since the war began after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on Israel has come from Palestinian journalists living there. Now, conditions are so dire that many reporters there are struggling to find enough nourishment.
“We are desperately concerned for our journalists in Gaza, who are increasingly unable to feed themselves and their families,” The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse, BBC News and Reuters said in a joint statement on Thursday. The news organizations noted that their reporters were facing the same grave conditions as the rest of Gaza’s population of roughly two million.
The statement called on the Israeli authorities “to allow journalists in and out of Gaza” and for “adequate food supplies.”
The World Food Program reported recently that a third of Palestinians in Gaza were going without food for days in a row.
The Society of Journalists for Agence France-Presse on Monday issued a statement detailing the struggles of some of the news organization’s contributors in Gaza, including a photographer who said last week that hunger had left him without the strength to work.
For about an 80-day stretch ending in May, Israel imposed a blockade on aid entering Gaza, casting it as an effort to pressure Hamas in cease-fire talks. Israel has accused Hamas of systematically looting humanitarian assistance, though some Israeli military officials say there is no evidence to support that claim.
Since late May, Israel has allowed some aid to enter Gaza and has established a controversial distribution system, with support from the United States, that is run by private contractors. Israeli forces are positioned near the group’s few sites, and hundreds of Palestinians have been killed near the locations or en route while trying to get food.
Some food has also entered the enclave through the established humanitarian system run by the United Nations, but not enough to alleviate the crisis, aid groups say.
Since May, the Committee to Protect Journalists has been reporting on the effects of the extreme hunger in Gaza on members of the news media; they have described fainting, exhaustion, brain fog and dizziness. Doctors and medical workers are facing the same plight.
The organization’s regional director, Sara Qudah, said Israel was “starving Gazan journalists into silence” and this week called for help on their behalf. “The world must act now: protect them, feed them, and allow them to recover while other journalists step in to help report,” she said.
On Sunday, Israel said it had paused military activity in parts of Gaza to allow in international aid amid growing outrage over the conditions there, but it is unclear whether such measures are enough to ease the suffering.
Ephrat Livni is a Times reporter covering breaking news around the world. She is based in Washington.
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