Israel has a tight grip over access into Gaza — for foreign aid and journalists

At the southern end of Gaza’s border with Israel, we enter the war zone. 

Dusty roads cross a barren desert near the Egyptian frontier. Bored-looking Israeli soldiers guard the checkpoint. Israeli military handlers tell us not to take their pictures.

Our convoy of humvees overflows with cameras, as a dozen reporters from all over the world — all wearing bulletproof vests and helmets — are ferried to a parking lot about 200 metres away. 

After two years of war, this is still the only way outside journalists are allowed inside Gaza by Israel’s military: escorted in, or “embedded” for a few hours. CBC News and other media organizations have made countless requests for freer access, none have been approved. 

On this day, though, after weeks of criticism by international agencies, NGOs and foreign governments, Israel wants to get a message out, to explain why aid may not be reaching hungry Palestinians in Gaza. 

“So if anyone asks why this is happening, I can tell you that this is waiting for the UN,” said a spokesman for COGAT, Israel’s aid distribution agency, who can’t be named.

It’s not Israel’s fault, he says. It lets in almost 300 truckloads of aid a day. But then, the pallets sit for weeks.

“All of this, this is just waiting for them,” he said.

Indeed, there are bags of rice and corn, as well as cans of fish, piled in the parking lot. Crates labelled UNICEF, Red Cross and World Food Program sit under the hot sun.

WATCH | Famine declared by UN-backed body in and around Gaza City: 

Famine declared by UN-backed body in and around Gaza City

The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, which monitors hunger levels, has warned the crisis in parts of Gaza has reached the most severe level. Israel dismissed the report.

The UN says it’s because of countless bureaucratic requirements imposed by Israel on import, and its unwillingness to provide adequate security along roads it patrols inside Gaza. 

“It’s not because we are sitting around drinking tea and waiting for someone to tell us that we’re not doing our job,” said Olga Cherevko, with the UN’s distribution agency OCHA. “It’s because we’re facing massive obstacles and obstruction and access is our biggest challenge.”

Few independent witnesses

Access is also the media’s biggest challenge.

Israel says Gaza’s too dangerous for outside journalists to be allowed in independently, and a security risk for its war effort. The Foreign Press Association petitioned Israel’s Supreme Court for entry, only to see that rejected as judges agreed Gaza posed “concrete security concerns.” A second hearing has been postponed for a year.

Normally, it’s journalists and media organizations who decide if the risks of a conflict zone are worth taking in places like Afghanistan, Libya and Iraq. Israel itself routinely allowed reporters into Gaza during previous wars.

This time, the world’s been left with few independent witnesses — and many questions.

Is there really widespread starvation in Gaza, as UN experts and NGOs report? Israel denies there is a famine, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu calling claims to the contrary a “blood libel.”

How do we know if 66,000 people died since Oct 7, 2023, as Gaza health officials claim? Israel dismisses any numbers coming from such officials as unreliable Hamas propaganda.

The lack of foreign reporters in Gaza has some Palestinians there wondering if the world has lost interest.

“We are forgotten, nobody sees us,” said Abdullah Al-Komi in central Gaza.

Tehilla Shwartz Altshuler doesn’t think so. She’s a media policy expert at the Israel Democracy Institute who argues Israel’s strategy has backfired.

“When you don’t allow media or transparency inside, the light will come out through other cracks. And those cracks might be biased or might cause even bigger harm,” she said. 

247 journalists dead: UN

Local journalists have become the eyes and ears for most major media organizations, including CBC News. 

“I’ve seen people burning. People dying in front of my eyes. People starving, so they are skeletons,” said Ghada Al-Kurd, who has filed stories for BBC, Der Spiegel and others.

But she’s not just an observer. She’s a Gazan who has lived through many of the hardships she reports, and wants “the world to see.” 

Al-Kurd has had to move eight times herself, while writing about Gaza’s displaced population. She is 12 kilos thinner from the same malnutrition that affects many Palestinians here. She’s watched friends die.

“Am I traumatized and I don’t even know it?” she asked. 

“We are losing relatives, friends, colleagues, and we don’t have the time to cry,” Al-Kurd said. “We just say goodbye to them. And then we turn the page.”

WATCH | CBC News joins collaborative Gaza reporting project: 

CBC News joins collaborative Gaza reporting project

With international journalists blocked from freely reporting from Gaza, CBC News joined other European Broadcasting Union (EBU) members to pool resources and expertise on the ground inside the territory to document the hunger crisis.

Many local journalists don’t get a chance to turn the page before they too are killed. The UN Human Rights Office says at least 247 have died in Gaza since Oct. 7, 2023, a number they say “should shock the world.” The Committee to Protect Journalists calls it the “deadliest conflict for journalists” since 1992, when the organization started keeping records. 

Some reporters are deliberately targeted by Israel, which accuses them of working for Hamas — usually without providing any evidence. Colleagues call it an attempt to scare them into silence.

“We know that this is a threatening message to Gaza journalists, to stop covering here,” said producer Hassan Salmi, “because this army gets angry at any voice to come out from Gaza strip.”

Israeli journalist Nir Hasson agrees. He writes for Haaretz newspaper. 

“We cannot excuse the destruction, the death, the starvation and the displacement in Gaza. We cannot explain it, so we do what we can so the world won’t see it,” he said.

Israel’s media has also turned a blind eye to Gaza. It often avoids coverage of events affecting Palestinians during the war — like civilian deaths or food shortages — or emphasizes official government versions of the situation.

And that seems to be the way a majority of Israelis like it. A poll done by the aChord Center at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in May found that 64 per cent feel there is no need to show a broader picture regarding the plight of Gaza’s civilians.

“The Israeli media has become very nationalist,” said Shwartz Altshuler. She says ever since Oct. 7, newspapers and TV networks have chosen to offer “comfort to the public,” and “local pride” instead of coverage they might not want to see.

So now, when angry protestors march in Madrid or Montreal, or when world leaders scold Israel and recognize Palestine, “most of the public is truly amazed by the outrage that Israel is facing,” she said. “They don’t understand where it comes from.”