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On Saturday, the first stage of a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, painstakingly brokered by delegations from the US, Egypt, and Qatar after fifteen devastating months of war, came to a close. It saw the return of thirty-three hostages taken from Israel on October 7, 2023, in exchange for roughly nineteen hundred Palestinian prisoners. But the future of the deal remains uncertain. Israel is now proposing to extend the temporary ceasefire by fifty days rather than moving to phase two, which would involve the withdrawal of remaining Israeli troops from Gaza. Hamas rejected the change. In response, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu halted the delivery of aid. (“There will be no free lunches,” he said.)
On the day a ceasefire was finally announced, I spoke with a friend who is currently reporting from the West Bank for a prominent international news organization. He told me that, as soon as members of the foreign press are allowed back into Gaza, he will likely be heading straight there to begin reporting on the aftermath of the war. Since October 2023, foreign reporters have not been allowed into Gaza without Israeli military escort; Israeli officials said at the time that it could not guarantee journalists’ safety. That conversation was over six weeks ago, and members of the press have still not yet been allowed back in. Israel has not commented on when—and, indeed, if—that will change.
Absent their international counterparts, Gazan journalists have reported determinedly, despite incredible risks; one hundred and sixty-six Palestinian reporters and media workers were killed during the war, some of whom the Committee to Protect Journalists believes were targeted. (Two Israeli journalists were killed on October 7 when militants from Gaza murdered roughly twelve hundred Israelis and foreign nationals and took hundreds more hostage.) For those who had been risking their lives to report on the destruction, the ceasefire came as an incredible relief. One of the most moving videos I saw in the hours after the deal was announced featured dozens of Gazan journalists gathered in their blue flak jackets, smiling as they sang a slow but triumphant Arabic ballad: “We will stay here until the pain is gone,” the lyrics went. “We will stay here until life is sweet.”
But, despite the commitment of local journalists, the fact that international reporters have not been allowed into Gaza has hindered the press’s ability to effectively communicate the devastation of the war. Last summer, Daoud Kuttab, a veteran Palestinian journalist from the West Bank who is currently based in Jordan, told me that this policy has made it easier for Israeli authorities to control the media narrative: “If the only reporters are Palestinian, it’s their word against the word of the Israeli army,” he said. Speaking about Israel’s claims that Hamas was using hospitals for military purposes, Kuttab said, “Imagine if Anderson Cooper was in Gaza and filmed the hospital, showing that there was no evidence it had been used by Hamas. How many lives would have been saved?” He added that the fact that outside journalists were barred from entering should have been noted in every article that ran about the war. “This is not a normal situation,” he said. “It’s abnormal.”
Whether Gazan hospitals were used by militants in violation of international law remains unclear. Groups of foreign journalists embedded with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have seen and photographed guns and explosives in tunnels beneath various hospitals but have had no opportunity to independently confirm the evidence. In its February 2024 report, a digital research group called Forensic Architecture analyzed the claims made by Israel to the International Criminal Court about the matter. The group concluded that the evidence presented by Israel was “false and misleading.” A UN report from last December similarly concluded that Israeli allegations “have remained vague and broad, and in some cases appear contradicted by publicly available information.” In response to the UN report, Israel shared videos and an infographic purporting to prove that militants had been present on hospital grounds.
This ambiguity is exactly Kuttab’s point. And, as time passes—and when they are allowed into Gaza—it will likely become more and more difficult for reporters to investigate. Jonathan Dagher, the head of the Middle East desk at Reporters Without Borders (RSF), told me that the safety concern cited by Israel “no longer stands.” “There is no reason that journalists should not be allowed to show the world the extent of the humanitarian crisis within Gaza,” he said, adding that the policy “clearly shows an intention to make journalism as difficult and as dangerous as possible.”
For now, the work of journalists on the ground continues. With the terms of the ceasefire dangling by a thread, fighting could resume at any moment in Gaza. Meanwhile, Israeli raids in the West Bank have intensified, displacing more than twenty thousand Palestinians as the death toll rises. There, too, journalists face significant repression from both the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli military, both of which have detained journalists. Those journalists routinely report under extremely dangerous conditions. “It’s only a matter of time before we get another Shireen moment,” my West Bank–based reporter friend told me, referring to Shireen Abu Akleh, a Palestinian journalist who was killed by Israeli fire in 2022 while reporting on a military operation in the West Bank.
This state of limbo, where Gazan journalists are left wondering if support will arrive and news outlets have no answers about when foreign correspondents will be allowed to reenter, mirrors the lack of commitment to a long-term plan that has characterized this conflict for decades. For now, journalists in Gaza are safer than they were before the ceasefire, though conditions on the ground remain dire. They will not stop reporting, it appears, until the pain is gone and life is sweet.
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