Category World News

Hebron, occupied West Bank – Among the more than 67,190 Palestinians killed in Israel’s war on Gaza, there has been a particularly heavy toll on journalists and media workers. More than 184 journalists have been killed by Israel in the war, including 10 Al Jazeera staff members, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Palestinian journalists in the occupied West Bank were only able to look on at their colleagues’ sacrifice in Gaza from afar. But they have also faced their own challenges, as Israel continues its near-daily practice of raids throughout the Palestinian territory.

As Palestinians in Gaza expressed relief at the news of the ceasefire deal, journalists in Hebron, in the southern West Bank, were documenting how Palestinians were being restricted from moving around large parts of the city because of the influx of Jewish Israelis as a result of the Jewish holiday of Sukkot.

Among the areas where Palestinians’ movement has been restricted is the Ibrahimi Mosque, also known as the Cave of the Patriarchs, in central Hebron.

As the journalists navigated the Israeli road closures, they sent their own messages to their colleagues in Gaza – who were forced to endure two years of war marked by displacement, hunger, and loss.

Mamoun Wazwaz, photojournalist

“A thousand blessings to all of you – those who work with the international agencies, TV channels, websites, radio stations, and in the field. You gave everything and sacrificed immensely. I pray that your suffering ends after two years of hell, and that you never live through another war. Your message was the most sacred and powerful in history. You shook the world – because you conveyed the truth. No one could have done what you did.

“The psychological and emotional impact of those who died will never fade. [I remember when Al Jazeera Gaza bureau chief] Wael Dahdouh stood over his son’s body and said, ‘They took revenge on us through our children,’ – I felt those words cut deep into my heart. I saw the footage on television and broke down crying. Imagine how his colleagues, who live it with him, must have felt.

“We live here in Hebron in constant contact with the Israeli occupation forces – there are frequent incursions and military checkpoints. After the war began, following October 7, 2023, the confrontations and clashes were intense.

“They treated us as part of the war, not as neutral observers, and used every possible means to fight us. Many times, I would say goodbye to my family as if it were the last time.”

“You journalists in Gaza sacrificed your lives for your people and homeland. You risked everything to convey the truth, the suffering, and the crimes against Gaza’s people. Whenever one of you is killed, I feel as it I’ve lost someone myself – as if I were the one wounded or arrested.

“You carried the message until your last breath, and you never stopped. You inspire us to continue the path you and the generations before you began. Thank you for every photo, every shot, every moment you captured for the world to see the many, many faces of war.

“War meant displacement. War meant famine. War meant being targeted by the military. War meant stopping education. Through your work, you made the world see it all.”

Raed al-Sharif, journalist

“My feelings are conflicted today after the ceasefire was announced. We in the West Bank followed everything happening in Gaza, where hundreds of journalists were killed or wounded, some losing limbs. What happened was a real crime, a genocide. Journalists [were especially targeted] because the occupation doesn’t want reports to come out of Gaza.

“Honestly, I feel ashamed as a Palestinian journalist. Despite our sacrifices in the West Bank, they don’t amount to even a drop in the sea of what our colleagues in Gaza experienced. They offered their lives and bodies – the most precious sacrifice of all.

On Thursday morning, President Donald Trump announced that the United States, working with Egypt, Turkiye and Qatar, had finally reached a ceasefire deal for Gaza. For a moment, it seemed as if Gaza’s long nightmare was coming to an end.

But the ceasefire didn’t bring peace; it only shifted the suffering into a quieter, more insidious form, where the real damage from the rubble began to settle into Gaza’s weary soul. Years of relentless shelling had built up fear and heartbreak that no outsider could erase.

During those two brutal years of bombing and near-total destruction, everyone in Gaza was focused on one thing: Staying alive. We were fighting for every minute, trying not to break down, starve, or get killed. Life became an endless loop of terror and waiting for the next strike. No one had the luxury to dream about tomorrow or even to mourn the people we’d lost. If there was any kind of shelter, and that was a big if, the goal was simply to move from one shattered refuge to another, holding on by a thread. That constant awareness that death could come at any moment turned every day into an act of survival.

Then, when the explosions finally eased, a quieter kind of pain crept in: All the grief we had buried to get through the chaos. Almost everyone had someone torn away, and those pushed-aside memories came rushing back with a force that took the breath out of us. As soon as the rockets fell quiet, another fight began inside people’s chests, one full of mourning, flashbacks and relentless mental anguish. On the surface, it looked like the war was over, but it wasn’t. It was far messier than that. Even when the shelling eased, the emotional wounds kept bleeding.

When the noise finally faded, people began to ask the questions they had forced themselves to ignore. They already knew the answers – who was gone, who would not be coming back – but saying the words out loud made it real. The silence that followed was heavier than any explosion they had survived. That silence made the truth impossible to avoid. It revealed the permanence of loss and the scale of what had vanished. There were holes everywhere, in homes, in streets, in hearts, and there was no way to fill them.

People in Gaza breathed a fragile sigh of relief when the news of a ceasefire arrived, but they knew the days ahead could hurt even more than the fighting itself. After 733 days of feeling erased from the map, the tears locked behind their eyes finally began to fall, carrying with them every ounce of buried pain. Each tear was proof of what they had endured. It was a reminder that a ceasefire does not end suffering; it only opens the door to a different kind of torment.
As the guns fell quiet, people in Gaza were left to confront the full scale of the devastation. You could see it in their faces – the shock, the fury, the grief – the weight of years under fire.

Roads that once hummed with life had fallen silent. Homes that had sheltered families were reduced to dust, and children wandered through the ruins, trying to recognise the streets they had grown up on. The whole place felt like a void that seemed to swallow everything, as bottled-up grief burst open and left everyone floundering in powerlessness. During the onslaught, the occupiers had made sure Palestinians could not even stop to mourn. But with the ceasefire came the unbearable realisation of how much had truly been lost, how ordinary life had been erased. Coming face to face with the absence of loved ones left scars that would not fade, and the tears finally came. Those tears ran down exhausted faces and broken hearts, carrying the full weight of everything remembered.

It was not only the mind that suffered. The physical and social world of Palestinians lay in ruins. When the bombing eased, people crawled out of their makeshift tents to find their homes and towns reduced to rubble. Places that had once meant comfort were gone, and streets that had once been full of life were now heaps of debris.

Families dug desperately through the rubble for traces of their old lives, for roads and signs that had vanished, for relatives still trapped beneath the debris. Amid the wreckage, the questions came: How do we rebuild from this? Where can we find any spark of hope? When an entire world has been destroyed, where does one even begin? Israel’s strategy was clear, and its results unmistakable. This was not chaos; it was a deliberate effort to turn Gaza into a wasteland. By striking hospitals, schools and water systems – the foundations of survival – the aim was to shatter what makes life itself possible. Those strikes sowed a despair that seeps into everything, fraying the bonds of community, eroding trust and forcing families to wonder whether they can endure a system built to erase them.

The destruction went deeper than bricks and bodies. The constant shadow of death, the bombs that could fall anywhere, and the psychological toll made fear feel ordinary, hope seem foolish, and society begin to unravel. Children stopped learning, money disappeared, health collapsed, and the fragile glue holding communities together came undone. Palestinians were not only struggling to survive each day; they were also fighting the slow decay of their future, a damage etched into minds and spirits that will last for generations.

When the fighting subsided, new forms of pain emerged. Surrounded by ruins and with no clear path forward, people in Gaza faced an impossible choice: Leave their homeland and risk never returning, or stay in a place without roads, schools, doctors or roofs. Either choice ensured the same outcome – the continuation of suffering by making Gaza unlivable. Endless negotiations and bureaucratic deadlocks only deepened the despair, allowing the wounds to fester even as the world spoke of “peace”.

The ceasefire may have stopped the shooting, but it ignited new battles: Restoring power and water, reopening schools, rebuilding healthcare, and trying to reclaim a sense of dignity. Yet the larger question remains: Will the world settle for symbolic aid and empty speeches, or finally commit to helping Palestinians rebuild their lives? Wars carve deep wounds, and healing them takes more than talk. It demands sustained, tangible support.

After two years under siege, Gaza is crying out for more than quiet guns. It needs courage, vision and real action to restore dignity and a sense of future. The ceasefire is not a finish line. It marks the start of a harder struggle against heartbreak, memory and pain that refuses to fade. If the world does not act decisively, Palestinian life itself could collapse. Rebuilding communities, routines and a measure of normalcy will be slow and difficult, but it has to happen if Gaza is to keep going. Outwardly, the war may have paused, but here it has only changed shape. What comes next will demand everything we have left: Endurance, stubborn hope, the will to stay standing.

We look at Palestinian children’s right to play in war-ravaged Gaza and in the occupied West Bank.

Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet has voted to accept the Gaza ceasefire deal, despite threats from right-wing coalition partners to bring down his government. Donald Trump, who brokered the deal, said it made Netanyahu more popular but accepted it could lead to him losing power.

A small tent held up by flimsy tarpaulin stands alone, surrounded by bloodied and tattered blue helmets and vests with the word “PRESS” marked across them. Smashed cellphones, laptops and camcorders, and debris lie scattered around it in what could be a scene from a warzone.

But this is not a warzone. It is an installation setting the scene for a two-day conference organised by Al Jazeera, which began on Wednesday to highlight the terrible dangers faced by journalists working in armed conflicts.

The installation has been positioned in front of the angular conference hall of the Sheraton Grand hotel, a brutalist building that stands in Doha’s upscale West Bay neighbourhood.

Inside, an LCD screen is playing footage of Al Jazeera’s journalists wearing those blue vests and jackets, reporting in Gaza. It then cuts to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu patting an Israeli military soldier on the back before footage of protesters carrying Palestine flags and posters calling Netanyahu a war criminal.

To the side of the hall, a panel listing the names and pictures of Al Jazeera’s journalists who have been injured or killed while reporting on Israel’s war in Gaza, over which Hamas and Israel have now agreed to the first stage of a peace process, appears. The panel is horrifyingly long, spanning the entire length of the hall.

Most recently, Al Jazeera journalist Anas al-Sharif was deliberately killed by an Israeli attack on a tent housing journalists in Gaza City on August 10. That assault also killed an Al Jazeera correspondent, two Al Jazeera camera operators, a freelance cameraman and a freelance journalist.

Opposite, on the other side of the hall, another panel displays the names and pictures of Al Jazeera’s journalists who have been killed while reporting on conflict all over the world, including Rasheed Wali, who was killed in Iraq in 2004 while covering clashes in the city of Karbala; and Mohammad al-Masalmeh, killed in Deraa, Syria in 2013 while covering the civil war.

It is a painful reminder that the war on Gaza, in which nearly 300 journalists and media workers have been killed, according to the Shireen Abu Akleh Observatory – including 10 from Al Jazeera – is no isolated case of journalists losing their lives while reporting in conflict zones.

Gaza has marked a turning point for journalists, however, Louise Alluin Bichet, director of projects and emergency response at Reporters Without Borders (RSF), told the conference on Wednesday.

While reporters once relied on the sorts of bulletproof vests seen strewn at the entrance to the conference to shield them from accidental injury, as they performed their jobs amidst and on the sidelines of conflict, she said, they are now being deliberately targeted.

“It does not matter what kind of body armour you’re wearing.”

As Maryam bint Abdullah Al-Attiyah, chairperson of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), highlighted, international law has been flouted in the Gaza war and “journalists have been targeted and killed.”

Journalists under fire

Al Jazeera Arabic anchor M’hamed Krichen opened the conference on Wednesday with a video of smoke billowing in Gaza as journalists come under attack.

“The journalists became news themselves,” Krichen said as an image of Al Jazeera’s Gaza bureau chief, Wael Dahdouh, writhing in pain after an attack played out on the screen. Dahdouh has lost many family members in Gaza, including his wife and several of his children.

The video then cut to footage of Samer Abudaqa, an Al Jazeera cameraman killed in an Israeli attack in December 2023 in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis. Krichen told the audience that Abu Daqqa had bled for six hours while Israeli forces prevented an ambulance from reaching him.

“Al Jazeera has said goodbye to many of its sons,” Krichen said.

As journalists come increasingly under fire, the newly appointed director general of Al Jazeera Media Network, Sheikh Nasser bin Faisal Al Thani, told the conference their safety must be the overriding priority for all news organisations.

“Otherwise, war crimes will remain unwritten,” he said. “Protecting journalists is protection of the truth itself.”

A witness and a victim

Wael Dahdouh was one of Al Jazeera’s most prominent correspondents during the earlier stages of the war. He has been seriously injured and has lost close relatives during the course of the war, and was evacuated to Qatar in December 2023 to receive treatment for an injury.

He describes what has been taking place in Gaza as a “total genocide”.

On October 25, 2023, an Israeli air strike targeted a house in the central Gaza Strip where Dahdouh’s family had taken shelter while he was reporting on the war. Several close family members, including his wife, son, daughter and grandson, were killed.

“Journalists are being killed and genocide is being committed against them,” Dahdouh told the conference, gesticulating heavily with his left hand, as his right hand is still recovering from a serious injury.

Dahdouh told the audience that reporting on a war which has had such devastating personal consequences has been a major challenge for all journalists in Gaza.

“When your family is dead, cut into pieces before you … there is a volcano inside of you. You want to fight, but you remain professional and you continue your work,” he said.

After he buried his wife and children, he told his son and daughter, who had been injured: “I am going back to Gaza (City) to continue my work. What do you want to do?”

“We will come with you. Either we die together or live together,” they said.

Then tragedy struck again. Dahdouh’s eldest son, Hamza Dahdouh, 27, also a journalist, was killed by an Israeli missile strike in western Khan Younis in January 2024.

Journalists in Lebanon, where Israel launched major attacks during the second half of 2024 – to target members of Hezbollah, it said – and killed at least 1,000 people, have also faced this dilemma.

Nakhle Odaime, news correspondent and presenter at MTV Lebanon, also chose to continue reporting despite coming under fire.

“I recorded a video because I thought it might be the last video I’ll record. The voice of the truth should reach the audiences,” he told the conference.

‘If we don’t move now, tomorrow will be worse’

While journalists are treated the same as civilians under international law – they are never legitimate targets in a war – there is one main difference between the two.

“The civilian can go away from the combat field, but the journalist has to stay,” said Omar Mekky, the regional legal coordinator for the Near and Middle East region for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). “To assimilate the war journalist with the civilian is not right.”

The protection of journalists in war zones must be specifically enshrined in international law, therefore, he and others – including Fadi El Abdallah, head of public affairs at the International Criminal Court (ICC) – told the conference.

It is also necessary to expand the definition of “journalist” in the era of social media, Mekky said. “Anyone who has access to these resources is a journalist,” he added, referring to those using phones and social media to broadcast news of the war.

Female journalists, who endure different forms of violence while reporting in conflict zones, must also be afforded special protections, said Renaud Gaudin de Villaine, a human rights officer at the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR)

Ultimately, however, none of this will be possible without the political will of states, said Bichet from RSF. “The backup needs to come from all the states that have the power to put pressure.”

Time is of the essence, said Doja Daoud, regional programme coordinator at the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).