Two journalist unions have filed a legal complaint in France against Israel for allegedly obstructing the work of French journalists in the Palestinian territories, including by denying access to Gaza, they said Tuesday.
Israel has not allowed international journalists into the blockaded Palestinian territory since the start of the war in October 2023 against Palestinian militant group Hamas, except when embedded with Israeli forces.
Agence France-Presse (AFP) was among several international news organisations in July to urge Israel to allow reporters in and out of the war-torn territory.
Read more'A wasteland': FRANCE 24 journalist given rare glimpse of war-ravaged Gaza
The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and the French Journalists’ Union last week filed the complaint with the Paris anti-terror prosecutor’s office, accusing Israel of “obstructing the freedom to inform” in Gaza and the Israeli-occupied West Bank, they said in a joint statement.
IFJ general secretary Anthony Bellanger said the complaint was the latest attempt to pressure Israel into opening up Gaza to the international press.
“For more than two years, the IFJ has been calling for the borders to be opened to the foreign press so that they can relieve our colleagues who are exhausted by two years of war,” said Bellanger.
The unions said they based their complaint on “numerous testimonies” from French journalists whose identities they are withholding for their security.
The complaint, a copy of which AFP obtained, also mentioned a journalist being pursued by around 50 Israeli citizens armed with “guns, cans of petrol and sticks” while reporting in the West Bank in the presence of the Israeli army.
The incident presents “the characteristic elements of a war crime”, the complaint’s authors argued.
Read moreOpen letter: With the deaths of journalists in Gaza, press freedom is also being assassinated
It is the latest of several such complaints linked to the Gaza war in France, where the authorities have jurisdiction in the case of an alleged breach of rights or crime against a French citizen.
In another case, prosecutors have asked an investigating judge to look into allegations that the killing of two French children in Gaza in October 2023 was a war crime.
Violence in the West Bank has soared since October 2023, and has not ceased despite the fragile truce between Israel and Hamas coming into effect in October.
The Gaza war was sparked by Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,221 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Israel’s retaliatory military assault on Gaza has killed at least 70,103 people, most of them civilians, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory. The United Nations considers those figures reliable.
More than 220 journalists have been killed in Gaza since October 2023, according to press watchdog Reporters Without Borders.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP)
English (US) · 