On March 19, 2024, Palestinian freelance journalist Mohammed Nafez Qaoud was visiting a displaced relative when he was arrested by Israeli military forces during their two-week siege of Gaza City’s Al-Shifa hospital, according to Qaoud’s wife, Asal Sabri Abu Taqiyya, who spoke to CPJ via messaging app and the Beirut-based regional press freedom group SKeyes.
The location of Qaoud, who contributes to the family magazine Al-Saada and Gaza’s Hamas government-owned Al-Rai Radio, was unknown until August 15 when the Palestinian prisoner support group Addameer named him as one of 31 prisoners from Gaza that its lawyer had visited in the West Bank’s Ofer prison.
CPJ was unable to determine whether Qaoud was facing charges, or the status of his health in prison.
Alaa Skafi, director of 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 press from entering Gaza.
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.