On November 16, 2023, Israeli security forces arrested Palestinian journalist Alaa Sarraj, a freelance photographer, on Gaza City’s Salah al-Din Street, according to the Beirut-based regional press freedom group SKeyes and the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate. A relative of Sarraj’s, who preferred to remain anonymous, told SKeyes that Sarraj was arrested as he was fleeing the city for the southern Gaza Strip.
A source close to Sarraj who asked to remain anonymous told CPJ via messaging app that the family recently found out through a friend who was imprisoned with him in the same location that he is being held in Nafha prison, 42 miles south of the southern Israeli city of Beersheba.
The relative said that Sarraj used to make advertisements for different local businesses, including retail stores and restaurants, and for a time he worked for nonprofit Islamic Relief, but when the war in Gaza started on October 7, 2023, he began to work as a journalist at Gaza City’s Al-Shifa Hospital along with his cousin Roshdi Sarraj, the founder of Ain Media who was killed in an Israeli airstrike on October 22, 2023.
Mohammed Sarraj, Alaa’s father, told CPJ that his son has suffered a broken rib and skin disease in custody. CPJ was unable to determine if he is facing charges in custody.
Alaa Skafi, director of Palestinian prisoner support group Addameer, told CPJ that journalists from Gaza are generally held under the Incarceration of Unlawful Combatants Law. According to Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, the law allows Israel to hold detainees for long periods of time without charge and with limited access to legal counsel. Skafi and B’Tselem both described overcrowding, unsanitary conditions, and abuse at Israeli prison facilities housing Palestinian journalists.
Israel’s military operations in Gaza and Lebanon, which began after the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel, have devastated the local press. Israel has killed scores of journalists in Gaza as well as six in Lebanon, jailed dozens of Palestinian journalists from Gaza and the West Bank, and destroyed much of the press infrastructure in Gaza, all while preventing the foreign pressfrom entering Gaza.
CPJ did not include Sarraj in its 2023 prison census, which counts journalists around the world jailed on December 1, because it was not aware of his case at the time.
CPJ emailed the Israel Defense Forces, Israel’s Security Agency, also known as Shin Bet, and the Israeli Prison Service in late 2024 for comment on the cases of imprisoned Palestinian journalists but received no response.