Edited by: Mohammed Ahddad 

The story began with the publication of video clips and images of places targeted by the occupation on social media platforms, and ended with threats and warnings that family members would be bombed. The story of the Palestinian journalist Anas al-Sharif, who became a correspondent for Al Jazeera, does not seem very different from the stories of hundreds of Palestinian journalists who suddenly found themselves documenting the occupation’s ongoing crimes in the Gaza Strip and across occupied Palestine. 

A Palestinian Narrative at Any Cost 

Anas tells Journalism Magazine his story of documenting the occupation’s crimes: “Since 7 October, I began publishing on my personal pages on social media platforms and through international, local and global agencies. The aim was to get the image out of northern Gaza amid the siege imposed by the occupation on the entry of foreign journalists. The truth is that this period laid the foundations for my joining Al Jazeera, which I used to supply with videos and reports before colleague Tamer contacted me and said to me clearly: go out with a report showing your face and personality, speak, and end the report with: Anas al-Sharif for Al Jazeera.” 

Anas al-Sharif moved from documenting crimes on his digital platforms to working for Al Jazeera, whose journalists have been directly targeted since the beginning of the war of genocide. Anas al-Sharif remembers his first report broadcast on the channel: “It was about a strike in Jabalia targeting warehouses storing timber, cleaning materials and chemicals. I appeared with my face visible, and the truth is that those were difficult moments and something new for me; because I had been working behind the scenes, whereas now I was appearing in person on the biggest channel.” 

The career of Anas al-Sharif, who is considered one of the few journalists who continued reporting from northern Gaza, was not free of confrontation with the Israeli occupation. “I received several calls from the occupation on my personal phone, and I did not answer them at all and did not respond to their messages. They did not stop there. I received voice recordings on WhatsApp from an officer in Israeli intelligence calling on me to stop covering events, leave northern Gaza and head south, otherwise I and my family would be targeted.” Yet the answer of Anas, who graduated from Al-Aqsa University, specialising in radio and television, was clear: “My family and I will not leave the northern Gaza Strip, and we have not thought about the decision for even a single moment. We are the people of Jabalia camp. We lived in this camp, and many wars have passed over us and we did not leave for a single moment throughout the previous years. As for my father’s decisive decision, it was not to leave at all. This threat only increased my determination to continue coverage.” 

The occupation carried out its threat, targeting Anas’s home and his family’s home. “My father, may God have mercy on him, was martyred. He had insisted on staying and not leaving Jabalia camp despite the threats and despite everything. This is a price paid by every citizen living in the Gaza Strip, and my tragedy is no different from that of millions of Palestinians. Away from the emotions left behind by this killing, I feel that I belong to this cause and that I am bound by the duty to convey the suffering of Palestinians to the world.”

The occupation carried out its threat, targeting Anas’s family home: “My father, may God have mercy on him, was martyred. He had insisted on staying and not leaving Jabalia camp despite the threats and despite everything. This is a price paid by every citizen living in the Gaza Strip.” 

Absent Protection 

The literature has traditionally identified the risks of practising journalism in areas of war and conflict in order to help improve the quality of coverage and protect the personal safety of journalists. But practising journalism in Palestine, and in Gaza where the war of genocide has continued for more than six months, appears to be a different experience. In Anas’s view, the occupation “left no safe place in the northern Gaza Strip; it targeted the hospitals from which we were conveying people’s suffering, and it targeted schools, shelter centres, ambulances... In other words, there was not a single place left in Gaza where the recognised safety measures could be taken. What made us feel bitterness was the absence of protection for journalists, whether from international institutions or local organisations.” 

Anas does not want to answer the question of international protection for journalists and recognition of them, contenting himself with saying: “Perhaps I do not want to answer this.” He explains this brevity by saying that “no international, local or regional institution has been able to protect journalists in the Gaza Strip, despite the occupation committing many crimes against them, targeting them and opening fire on them. What has been provided to them so far is insufficient, because the risks are very high; they affect not only them but also their families.” 

Anas’s message to the international, local and regional institutions that sing the praises of journalistic work and the protection of journalists is “to look at the Palestinian journalist who is exposed to extreme danger and subjected to bombing and massacres, along with his family, and to provide him with protection; because he is the last voice of what is happening in Gaza now.” 

According to the figures available so far, the occupation has killed more than 140 journalists; that is to say, Palestine has become an environment in which journalistic work is impossible. Despite this, Anas believes that conveying the narrative of what is happening in Gaza from the field makes you feel “that you are offering something positive to people amid the continuation of massacres and starvation... When I convey the suffering of one of the people of Gaza, I feel that I have made even a small contribution to my cause before being a journalist. This has been my cause since I was born here in Gaza, in Jabalia camp. Therefore, before I am a journalist, I am the owner of a cause that I am trying to convey to the world.” 

Anas does not want to answer the question of international protection for journalists and recognition of them, contenting himself with saying: “Perhaps I do not want to answer this.” He explains this brevity by saying that “no international, local or regional institution has been able to protect journalists in the Gaza Strip, despite the occupation committing many crimes against them.

The Power of the Field 

Anas al-Sharif answers the question about the beginnings of his field journalism work: “I started as a photojournalist, conveying field events from the Gaza Strip and specifically from the north of the Strip, whether popular and local activities or the activities of the Palestinian factions. I conveyed the suffering of prisoners’ families and documented the Great March of Return and the breaking of the siege on the eastern borders of the Gaza Strip. All my work was limited to photojournalism, and I received many awards in recognition of my coverage of the March of Return and the breaking of the siege.” 

The fundamental shift or turning point in his professional path came on the day of the 7 October attack. “It was completely different in my professional experience, and what helped me was that I had worked as a photographer preparing the material, then editing it and choosing the angles of treatment. In other words, I worked as a correspondent, producer and mobile-phone photographer.” 

Anas recounts the first hours of the 7 October attack and the extent to which journalists were prepared for field coverage. What happened “was surprising to everyone, and with the pace of events accelerating, we did not make any arrangements as in previous wars. The field imposed the form of coverage on us. We were racing against time without any prior arrangements, given the large scale of massacres in different places. I want to point out here that, as events developed, field coverage improved and we began to focus on the massacres despite the harshness of what we were seeing.” 

The experience of journalistic coverage in Gaza differs from that in other war zones. For more than six months of the war of genocide, journalists reported exceptional challenges represented by the absence of services and the cutting off of electricity and communications. Anas al-Sharif challenges these conditions, saying: “I did not stop covering for a single moment. I would move across the roofs of homes and hospitals looking for an internet signal, with all the risks that accompanied that, given that we were being directly targeted. After four hours of waiting and hardship, the report would be sent after time had already passed since the massacres, but my concern was that the voice of the north should remain present. In fact, at certain moments I became unable to make direct calls, contenting myself with voice recordings only.” 

Anas’s ordeal with journalistic coverage in Gaza is a summary of the ordeal of the few journalists who remained in the north, “risking ourselves, using eSIMs even if they involved danger; what mattered most was that the image from the field should remain present.” 

Solidarity among journalists was the last line of defence in preserving the value of journalism, as Anas recounts: “We were brothers to one another. We moved together from one place to another, documenting the occupation’s crimes from different angles. The experience showed that the occupation deliberately bombs journalists. For example, while colleague Mohammed Arab was documenting the destruction in the Tel al-Zaatar area near the Indonesian Hospital, warplanes fired three missiles directly towards the journalists.” 

At the beginning, we wondered whether to publish this interview in the traditional format, governed by question and answer, or to make it convey the spontaneity of the answers. The decision settled on the second option. But Anas’s final message we leave as it is, without editing or arrangement: 

“I have documented many massacres, bombings, homes collapsing on the heads of their residents, and major massacres whose number of martyrs reached the hundreds. But none of that pained me more than the period of famine that northern Gaza went through. People here endured massacres and the blood of the martyrs, and were patient through separation and everything else, but they could not bear the famine and the screams of children at night, and families roaming and moving from one place to another as they appealed to the world for one meal for one day for their children. I suffered from that personally. I mean, we could not find bread or rice or canned food. I mean, days would pass when we could not provide a single meal. Despite that, we resisted as much as we could, and continued coverage until the last moment and the last breath.” 

Update: The number of Palestinian journalist martyrs had reached 264 by 10 August 2026 

This article was origianlly published in Arabic on 3 Jun, 2024