Since October 7, journalists have been faced with a serious and worrying situation. While the Gaza Strip has been under intense Israeli bombardment, the foreign press has been denied access by Israel and Egypt. They have made it impossible to enter, impossible to report on events without depending on the press department of each side.
Blocked in Gaza, Palestinian journalists enjoy no protection and have already paid a heavy price for the conflict. Since the Hamas terrorist attacks on October 7 and the massive Israeli response that followed, 27 journalists have died, according to the NGO Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) – including 22 Palestinians, 4 Israelis and one Lebanese. Dozens more have been injured.
In Gaza, the correspondents of press agencies, television channels, and the contacts of Le Monde and other newspapers are seeing their facilities bombed and their families endangered. In a territory where freedom of information is already regularly trampled underfoot by Hamas and its allies, they are now subjected to a virtual blackout, with regular cuts in electricity and communications, preventing them from transmitting what they see and hear to the outside world.
The press has been able to travel to Israel to report on the Hamas terrorist attacks, visit the kibbutzes under attack, interview wounded witnesses and even see the mutilated victims in the morgues. It must now be able to report in the same way on Israel's brutal retaliation and the massive destruction it has wrought in Gaza, on the war crimes committed against civilians.
We know that disinformation and lies are also weapons of war. Preventing journalists from freely exercising their profession can only fuel them. This right to inform and be informed is the pillar of our democracies and, more broadly, it is a fundamental freedom, enshrined in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Le Monde therefore calls on all international bodies, as well as the leaders of all countries, to demand the protection of journalists currently trying to work in Gaza, and for the territory to be opened up to the press so that it can do its job there: to inform without hindrance and bear witness to the path, however catastrophic, of the world.