Foreign Press Association urges Israel to lift ban on Gaza access for journalists
Citing the halt in fighting, the group says restriction has ‘severely hindered independent reporting,’ and that there is now ‘no justification’ for it
The Foreign Press Association in Israel on Thursday called for the government to lift restrictions and allow “immediate access to Gaza for journalists” now that there is a ceasefire between Israel and the Hamas terror group.
The FPA’s statement said that for 15 months of the war in Gaza, Israel’s “unprecedented restrictions” on the entry of foreign journalists to the Gaza Strip “have severely hindered independent reporting, robbing the world of a full picture of the situation in Gaza.”
The organization, which represents foreign journalists working in Israel and the Palestinian territories, added that the ban on independent journalists has placed “an undue and dangerous burden on our Palestinian colleagues in the territory.”
“These journalists have risked their lives to keep the world informed of this crucial story,” the statement said.
“With a ceasefire now in place and military activity scaled back, there is no justification for any further delay in granting access,” the statement said.
“We call on Israel to uphold the fundamental principles of press freedom and allow unrestricted entry for journalists to Gaza,” the FPA concluded.
The Foreign Press Association strongly urges the Israeli government to immediately lift restrictions preventing foreign journalists from entering Gaza.
— Foreign Press Assoc. (@FPAIsPal) January 23, 2025
The government did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the FPA’s letter.
The FPA and other organizations such as the UN have issued numerous similar statements throughout the war, urging Israel to grant access to foreign press. The government has rebuffed the requests, saying the situation in Gaza was too dangerous to allow access without military escort.
Last January, the High Court ruled that Israel could continue barring foreign journalists from the Strip, citing ongoing security concerns after months in which only Gazans or correspondents accompanied by the army could report from the enclave.
In their ruling, High Court justices Ruth Ronen, Khaled Kabub, and Daphne Barak-Erez accepted the Defense Ministry’s stance that the escorted tours provided an appropriate measure of press freedom given “extreme security concerns at this time and concrete security threats that go with approving entry permits for independent journalists.”
However, now that a ceasefire has brought a halt to 15 months of war sparked by the terror group’s October 2023 massacre in southern Israel, there has been a renewed call for independent access for journalists to the Strip.
