Since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas, international media outlets have been barred from entering Gaza to cover the fighting and document the plight of the enclave’s stricken population.
On Wednesday, FRANCE 24’s correspondent Noga Tarnopolsky was among a group of around 20 foreign journalists allowed into the ravaged Palestinian territory for what she described as “an extremely limited and circumscribed visit” organised by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
Jerusalem-based Tarnopolsky said the journalists were driven “through the same fence that Hamas fighters crossed on October 7, 2023” and taken to a recently established IDF base in a suburb of Gaza City.
“We were allowed to get up on a kind of sand dune that surrounds this military encampment and see the destruction all around us,” she said. “What you see is a wasteland, simply mounds of rubble.”
She added: “One thing that really struck me was the dust in the air. The quality of the air is different there. The reason is not just the complete destruction. There are no buildings to cut the wind. You're standing there in a cloud of dust.”
The FRANCE 24 correspondent said the group of journalists were not able to see or speak to any of the local population. She said a key takeaway of the visit was the difficulty to locate the so-called “yellow line” that marks areas still occupied by the Israeli army under a fragile ceasefire deal brokered by the US.
“One of the things we saw very clearly today is that it is close to impossible to see where it is,” she said, adding that “close to 200 people have been killed in the vicinity of this line” since the ceasefire took effect.
“The army can't 100 percent define where it is. I am certain the Gazan civilians and even armed militias can’t really know where it is,” Tarnopolsky said. “So, this matter of Gazans who keep getting killed for crossing an invisible line I think is going to become more important news as the days pass.”
Read more‘Civilians can’t go home’: Gaza faces Israel’s new ‘yellow line’
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