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‘We are all walking many, many miles to document what is happening’
Gazan journalist Tahseen al-Astall tells a Zoom meeting about the struggle to report from the besieged Strip as water, fuel and food run increasingly short, writes TIM DAWSON
Tahseen (centre) discusses the grim situation for journalists on the ground. Translator Ola Kassabis pictured on the left
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AS HE started to speak to international journalists over Zoom, Gazan reporter Tahseen al-Astall raised a plastic water bottle and took a sip. “Water is very expensive now in Gaza,” he said. “In fact, finding any water at all is difficult.”
He was sitting in a makeshift tent, sun beating through its flapping walls, in the midst of the media encampment that has grown up around the Nasser hospital in Khan Yunis.
“Conditions here are very harsh and arduous. We are here because it is the only place that we can get electricity and an internet connection.”
Astall, vice-president of the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate, has spent much of the past fortnight moving among the 1,000 journalists now working in Gaza, distributing personal blast-trauma kits and battery packs, with financial help from the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) International Safety Fund.
He spoke of his hope that more practical aid will be available if humanitarian convoys are allowed into the territory.
He was speaking during a meeting organised by the Brussels branch of the National Union of Journalists UK and Ireland, facilitated by the IFJ.
Whatever footage you see from Gaza is coming from a group of around 1,000 journalists, whose determination to disseminate news from Palestine is extraordinary.
Nearly all are living in temporary accommodation. Food is in short supply. The lack of fuel means that most have to go on foot to wherever news is, carrying recording equipment on their shoulders.
“We are all walking many, many miles to document what is happening — every inch of Gaza has a story to tell.
“The international media is only seeing 5 per cent of what is actually happening here,” says Astall. “We are determined to capture everything that we can and just hope that the world will wake up to what is being done to us.”
His most chilling testimony, however, was his belief that the Israeli Defence Force is deliberately targeting journalists.
“The Israeli forces phone up journalists in Gaza and tell them that they and their families are going to be targeted for attack, and then the attacks come — purposefully aimed rockets and missiles deliberately intended to kill us.”
It was clear from the several journalists sitting with Astall that his view is widely shared among Gaza’s journalists. Coming in the wake of the killing of the family of Al-Jazeera bureau chief Wael al-Dahdouh’s family, this is perhaps unsurprising. Whether evidence beyond such personal testimony emerges remains to be seen.
The hook-up ended abruptly. “There is too much bombing now for us to carry on,” said translator, Ola Kassab. The closing image of the Zoom call was of Astall and his colleagues scrambling to rush from the tent in which they had been sitting, leaving only an empty water bottle in shot.
Tim Dawson is deputy general secretary of the International Federation of Journalists.
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