RAMALLAH: Palestinian journalists and local officials rallied against Israeli attacks on Gaza media workers on Wednesday in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah, journalists reported.

Dozens of journalists and Palestinian officials marched towards the city’s UN headquarters carrying coffins bearing the names and photos of journalists killed in the Gaza Strip since the conflict started on Oct 7, 2023.

“All of them, every single one of them has his own story,” said Nasser Abu Baker, head of the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate, which organised the event.

Among the names was Anas Al-Sharif, a prominent correspondent for Qatari news channel Al Jazeera in the Gaza Strip, who was killed in August in an Israeli air strike outside Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City.

The UN and media rights groups have strongly condemned Sharif’s killing, while Israel has accused him of having “posed as a journalist”, maintaining he in fact was “the head of a terrorist cell”.

After the speeches, Abu Baker said he would hand over a letter to the UN representative in Ramallah asking for the Secretary General Antonio Guterres to take measures “to protect our journalists in Gaza because they are daily under the fire, under the bombing strike, in a very dangerous situation”.

Abu Baker said that his syndicate had reported the killing of 252 Palestinian journalists in Gaza since Oct 7, 2023. Other journalists have gone missing during the ongoing war, and Israel prevents foreign journalists from entering Gaza except during brief excursions accompanying its forces.

Islam Abu Ara, director of digital media for the Palestinian Authority-affiliated newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, said that the situation had also deteriorated for journalists in the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967.

“There are also restrictions on journalists in the West Bank — assaults by settlers and pressure from the Israeli army,” Abu Ara said.

He said that he personally faced restrictions, particularly when moving between cities. “When (soldiers at checkpoints) find out I’m a journalist, they search my car much more thoroughly than they do for ordinary people,” he said, noting his phone was also checked.

Between 2024 and 2025, Israel fell 11 places on Reporters Without Borders’ (RSF) World Press Freedom Index, from 101 to 112. RSF also says the Palestinian territories have become the most dangerous place in the world for journalists since the start of the conflict.

This includes the West Bank, “where journalists were already the victims of abuses by both the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli occupying forces”, it said.

Published in Dawn, October 9th, 2025