Fatigue, hunger and terror: This is how journalists live and work in Gaza
"I never occurred to me that I would live and work in a tent, deprived of the simplest basics of human life to water and bathroom.
A tent of fabric and plastic is more like agricultural homes in the summer and refrigerators in the winter, "Journalist Abdullah Miqdad says to the BBC.
Journalists in Gaza are gathered in Khaim near hospitals along the Strip, there they work and sleep.
Journalists need electricity and the Internet around the clock to complete their work. But electricity is cut off from the sector, and they resort to stationing near hospitals whose generators are still working to provide them enough to charge their phones and equipment.
Despite the difficulty and danger of movement throughout the Gaza Strip, journalists move to cover the developments of the war, but often they cannot equip or send the photos and videos that they collect until after returning to the tents near the hospitals to obtain electricity.
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"We are stationed in hospitals speeding our work in coverage, and we get directly on the images of injuries, corpses, funerals and interviews, especially since the movement and communications to obtain these materials may be impossible in many cases, in addition to that the hospitals are protected in international humanitarian law, so our presence in them is relatively safer." Hanin Hamdouna, a journalist in the Palestinian "Dunya Al -Watan", who also deals with international institutions, including the BBC.
However, their presence near hospitals did not guarantee the journalists as safety, nor did they guarantee them their professional capacity, which is supposed to protect them under international law.
"We feel like journalists that we are targeted all the time."
197 journalists and media workers have been killed at least since the start of the Israeli military attack on Gaza in October 2023 to August 26, 2025, 189 of whom were in Gaza, according to what the Committee to Protect Journalists has documented, and this number exceeds the death toll in the world during the past three years.
"We feel like journalists that we are targeted all the time from the Israeli occupation forces, so we live in constant concern about our safety and the safety of our people," says journalist Ahed Farwana, Secretary of the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate of the BBC.
It is the responsibility of Palestinian journalists in Gaza alone to transfer the details of the war within the besieged sector after Israel prevented international media institutions from entering there.
These institutions, including the BBC, are dependent on local journalists living in Gaza to cover the war.
With the passage of about two years of continuous killing, hunger and displacement in the sector, media institutions need to cover and the forces of journalists drained from work without stopping. The field also opened to young men from Gaza, some of whom did not practice the press previously, to carry the camera and become reporters and press photographers.
Some journalists work officially and exclusively with local or international institutions. But many of them contract a temporary or circumstantial system. This means that their work is not stable, and that the degrees of protection and insurance as well as the capabilities available to them are varying. But killing, hunger and fear surround them as the residents of the Strip, and their professional characteristic does not provide them with the protection they are supposed to enjoy.
"Every journalist in the world to cover the news and its right to enjoy international protection. Unfortunately, the Israeli army does not deal with journalists on this basis, especially when it comes to Palestinian journalists." Journalist Ghada Al -Kurd tells the BBC. Ghada is a correspondent of the German magazine Deir Spiegel and also deals with other international institutions, including the BBC.
Israel denies targeting its forces for journalists. But she adopted the killing of Al -Jazeera correspondent in Gaza, Anas Al -Sharif in his media tent, with a direct targeting of the killing of five of his colleagues. Israel justified this that the Sharif "belongs to the military wing of Hamas", which Ans Al -Sharif denied.
The Journalists Protection Committee said that Israel failed to provide evidence confirming its claim.
"This is a repeated pattern of Israel, not only in the current war but also over the previous decades; Israeli forces kill a journalist, and then Israel says that he is a terrorist, but it provides insufficient evidence to support these allegations."
Five journalists were working with international agencies, out of at least twenty people who killed them, a double Israeli bombing on Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, south of Gaza, on Monday, August 25, 2025.
Direct footage of the second raid bombing showed relief workers who had reached the place to help the victims of the first bombing.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that the army "is being investigating" in what he described as "the tragic incident."
“If you work inside a tent, do not know what may happen at any moment, your tent may be bombed or its surroundings, what do you do then? In front of the camera, I must be very focused, erasure, and fast intuitive despite fatigue. But the most difficult is to focus on what is going on in my surroundings and what can be done if I target my existential place. Gaza, for the BBC.
"We are steadfast with news of people's hunger and pain, and we are hungry and hungry."
The United Nations Integrated Classification Initiative (IPC) announced on August 22nd, officially entered the Gaza Strip in the famine stage officially. The United Nations initiative raised its classification of the situation in Gaza to the fifth degree, which is the maximum and worst degree in the hard food security scale.
The initiative said that more than 500,000 people in Gaza face "hunger, extreme poverty and death."
In July, a UN report found that one in three people in Gaza spends consecutive days without eating.
"The cup of coffee mixed with chickpeas or a cup of tea without sugar may be all you can eat throughout the day of work," Independent journalist Ahmed Jalal told the BBC: "In many days we are severe headache and fatigue, so we are not able to walk from the severity of hunger, but we continue our work and transfer us for long distances until we secure coverage of the news or our scarcity of our equipment and in search of an internet to transfer the news outside the walls of the sector."
Ahmed Jalal was displaced with his family many times, and every time he continued his journalistic work while trying to secure a safe, water and food for his family.
Ibn Ahmad needs a surgical intervention, but the circumstances of Gaza in this war deprived the boy of treatment. The pain squeezes the heart of Ahmed Jalal talking in front of the camera about the children of Gaza who do not find treatment, and the image of his son and his inability to do anything to help increase the burden of work in weight and also increase his sincerity, he says.
"We are part of the news and its conversion at the same time, and this may be a reason and motivation to continue to provide the image more sincerely," says Jalal.
"My heart breaks out of the severity of the pain and I convey the news of the killing of colleagues of journalists, and my mind tells me that I am coming ... I eat the pain from the inside, but I hide it from the camera and continue to work."
At the end of his speech to the BBC, Ahmed Jalal summarized his feeling: "I feel that I suffocate, exhausted, hungry, tired, and afraid, and I cannot even stop for a break."
"During this war, we lost the ability to express our feelings."
Unlike Ahmed Jalal, and despite the cold pain in her voice, Ghada Al -Kurds could not express what she feels covered for nearly two years of death and hunger that spread among her people in her city. Ghada says to the BBC:
"We have no time to think about our feelings. During this war, we lost the ability to express our feelings. We are in a continuous shock. Maybe we recover this ability after we end the war."
Until that day comes, Ghada continues to conceal her fear for her two daughters, and her grief over her brother and family whose bodies are still under the rubble since the beginning of the war in a military zone, she says.
"The war changed our psychology and personalities, we will need a large hospitalization period after the end of the war until we return as we were before the seventh of October 2023," says Ghada.
Twenty -seven countries in the media freedom coalition, including the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Australia and Japan, issued a joint statement calling on Israel to allow independent foreign media to immediately enter Gaza.
The statement condemned the attacks on journalists, and said, "The intentional targeting of journalists is unacceptable. International humanitarian law gives protection to civilian journalists during the armed conflict," stressing that those working in Gaza are local or foreigners who must have protection.
Helped in preparing the report, the photojournalist in Gaza, Amer Sultan.
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