Sunday, August 03, 2014

Journalism in Gaza

"All hotels at the breach are booked out and the price for a room is not cheap these days even if you a room without seaside view. Gaza City is right now not the best place for spending your summer vacation, but the price for a room is the same as a room in a hotel at the Côte d'Azur. Wartime is the time for big business for the accommodation industry in Gaza. In the lobbies of the hotels, the journalists meet their fixers, producers, stringers or facilitators. There are plenty of names for media professionals who never be mentioned in reports but who are obligatory for reporting from Gaza. No matter if Al Jazeera or ARD, all networks work with local stringers who must have an official accreditation at the Media Office of the Hamas. They research facts, schedule interviews, hire drivers and book studios. They demand a daily fee depending on their skills and contacts. Going to hell is not for free...There is struggle for freedom and dignity in any street and place in Gaza. You do need a stringer to cover it. But Hamas wants foreign correspondents to have a stringer whom they trust in order to make sure that you do not explore Gaza by your own.

From  "The Days of Oil and Za'atar, Gaza Diary", a work in progress by Martin Lejeune.

Martin once interviewed me:


Gaza und Westjordanland sollten durch einen Korridor miteinander verbunden werden. So stand es 1993 im Oslo-Vertrag.
Gott sei Dank gibt es diesen Korridor nicht, über den Hamas-Aktivisten ungehindert aus Gaza nach Samaria gelangen könnten.


or

Gaza and the West Bank should be connected by a corridor. This was written in 1993 in the Oslo Accords.
Thank God there is not this corridor, [for otherwise] the Hamas activists could freely move from Gaza to Samaria.


^

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I would like to add another part from his Blog:

"Ein Vater rennt mit einer Plastiktüte in
der Hand zu dem Rettungswagen, in dem seine tote Tochter liegt. Der Vater
zeigt dem Sanitäter Gehirnmasse seiner Tochter, indem er den Boden der
Plastiktüte behutsam anhebt. “Nimm das mit für die Bestattung”, sagt er zum
Sanitäter."

or

"A father, with a plastic bag in his hand, is running to the ambulance vehicle, in which his dead daughter lies. While carefully opening the plastic bag, the father shows cerebral matter of his daughter to the medic. 'Take this with you for the funeral', he says to the medic."