The work of Palestinian journalists has become increasingly difficult over the past couple of years. “We realised that, as Palestinian journalists, we are directly targeted because we convey a message which challenges the stereotypes perpetuated by the Israeli media,”Hafez Abu Sabra told Kollektivist.
When Kollektivist met Hafez Abu Sabra in Nablus last month, he had his two small daughters with him. We were sitting in a garden in the middle of the city, the tall trees giving us shade from the summer heat. It could have seemed like a safe space away from the brutal crimes of the Israeli occupation.
But Nablus has been subject to frequent raids in recent years, and the occupation has installed iron gates at all ten entrances of the city, which can close suddenly at any time of the day. This affects Hafez’s work – he frequently travels around. This week marked two years since the Israeli occupation started the genocidal onslaught on the population in Gaza, and since then, they have also escalated the violence in the West Bank.
Many Palestinian journalists continue working despite the dangers of being a journalist. To Abu Sabra , Palestinian journalists are not just regular employees. He said, “They are the voice of our people. Their work is so influential that today, the images of Palestinian journalists are awakening the world. They have played a key role in shifting international opinion in support of the Palestinian people.”
Abu Sabra is the Palestine correspondent for the Jordanian news channel Roya News, and he covers the northern areas of the West Bank. These areas have been under grave violence from the occupation over the past years, with over 40,000 Palestinians being forcibly displaced from the Jenin, Tulkarem, Nur Shams and El Far’a refugee camps.
Being a journalist in the West Bank became increasingly difficult since the occupation assassinated the renowned Al Jazeera correspondent Shireen Abu Akleh in May 2022, Abu Sabra explained.
She was his friend and colleague, and he had seen her the night before she was killed. Her death deeply affected him, and it also changed many aspects of the lives of Palestinian journalists:
“We realised that, as Palestinian journalists, we are directly targeted because we convey a message which challenges the stereotypes perpetuated by the Israeli media.”
Israeli and Western media outlets often portray Palestinians in a one-dimensional way, presenting them as terrorists or villains. Hafez said that the work of Palestinian journalists fights against this dangerous narrative.
“We carry forth the opposite message: the message of life, the message of the Palestinian people whose voices were always silenced. With the development of the media and the sharing on social media, the Palestinian journalists became able to carry the voice of the Palestinian people.”
Since October 2023, 916 new checkpoints and barriers have been established in the West Bank, where Palestinians daily go through violence and hours-long queues. Palestinian journalists are not exempt from this, and due to their work, they are often subject to even more danger when moving around the West Bank.
Due to unexpected road closures and hours of waiting, Hafez decided to build an office in his car, where he mostly works nowadays.
“I often sleep in there; my office and home are in my car. I have food, clothes, a fridge and coffee there,” he said.
Highlighting the difficulties he and his colleagues go through, he said that the most prominent problem for journalists is that they are living under occupation:
“The Israeli occupation does not treat us accordingly within international law; they first and foremost treat us as Palestinians before being journalists.”
The IOF regularly attacks journalists and has been opening fire towards them, often confiscating or breaking their equipment. Since October 7th 2023, the Israeli occupation forces (IOF) have killed more than 270 journalists and media workers in Gaza. In the West Bank, over 140 journalists have been unlawfully arrested. Dozens of them were placed in administrative detention without charge and have been beaten and denied medical treatment.
“They suffer in prison just like any Palestinian hostage from torture, beating, torment, starvation, and disappearances, and this is not just the journalists; it is all of the Palestinian captives,” Abu Sabra said.
He added that the suffering endured by Palestinian journalists represents only a small part of the broader suffering experienced by the Palestinian people as a whole, but that “the journalists are targeted twice as much because they carry the voice and the message of the Palestinian people.” Over 11,000 Palestinian captives are held in Israeli prisons, with reports showing that the occupation forces are torturing them and breaking international law.
Raneen Abahra began working as a journalist in 2022, while also pursuing a career in journalism. Kollektivist met her in the middle of the city of Jenin last month, and she had just finished a report about a Palestinian bee-keeper.
“In my career as a journalist, I covered maybe three joyful stories. Being a journalist in Palestine is not easy,” she said.
When the IOF attacked Jenin during the summer of 2023, her most difficult time as a journalist started. While working in the camp, she and her colleagues would sleep in the hospitals, being ready to work 24/7.
“Mentally, it was challenging. Work was my whole life; I did not have a social life, and I was not going out or having guests. I would report on the martyrdom of a guy, and my day was over after that. I kept on reliving the incident. I lost all my feelings. The days were very hard; my mental health was very bad."
In January 2025, she covered the IOF’s raids and the forced displacement of the Jenin refugee camp, which holds a huge significance for the Palestinians in Jenin.
“We did not just lose the camps; they are a part of our identity. We are in the camps temporarily until we return to our land in Haifa, Yafa and Akka,” she said and referred to the areas that the Zionist movement ethnically cleansed in 1948.
In January 2024, an Israeli drone killed four brothers in Jenin. Raneen was one of the first journalists to come to the crime scene. This is one of the stories she will never forget, and this and other gruesome stories affected her deeply.
“I was falling apart. My problem was that I was reliving the incidents – I would relive them, and it would affect me all day long; I would not disconnect. Life became trivial; I stopped giving everything the importance it deserved. I started looking at everything from an emotional perspective. This caused problems with my family, with my friends, and with my personal life,” she said.
Due to the extreme mental toll of covering the genocide of her own people, Raneen decided to take a step back last year. She has not stopped completely, but she is taking on fewer tasks while completing a master’s degree in journalism.
Abahra said that after the genocide in Gaza started, she realised that the media world treats journalists as numbers and that they do not consider them human:
“Palestinian journalists are among the best in the world, and still the world looks at us as if we are just material. After the genocide in Gaza and the continued targeting of journalists, I saw that the world treats us as numbers. They do not consider them human."
Abahra is frequently in contact with journalists in Gaza, and she was especially close with Ismail Al Ghoul, who was killed by the IOF in July 2024. The targeting and killing of Palestinian journalists made Raneen reconsider why she was working in journalism:
“I started thinking, why do we go out to work and get killed? For whom? The world has heard from us for 100 years; why should we die? Today, I am asking myself, Why should I die if people forget me after two days?"
Abahra wants to continue with journalism when she finishes her degree next year.
“I am so proud of being Palestinian. We do not have an airport or the sea, yet I love Palestine. We do not love Palestine with checkpoints, but we love our Palestine.”
