Article 79 of Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions says that journalists engaged in areas of armed conflict “shall be protected as such under the Conventions and this Protocol”. Despite these protections granted by international law, scores of Palestinian journalists and media personnel have been killed in almost two years of Israel’s war on Gaza. The estimates vary. While the American non-profit Committee to Protect Journalists puts the number at a minimum of 192, the UN Human Rights Office posted on X earlier this week that it was at least 242. These grim figures make Gaza the deadliest war in history for journalists. The Watson School of International and Public Affairs calculates that more journalists have been killed in Gaza than in both world wars, the Vietnam war, the wars in Yugoslavia and the US war in Afghanistan combined. The most recent case is of 28-year-old Al Jazeera correspondent Anas al-Sharif, killed in a make-do newsroom next to a hospital, along with four colleagues. Israeli officials have admitted to killing Sharif, claiming that he was the head of a Hamas terrorist cell — an allegation that Al Jazeera and Sharif had previously denied categorically. When conflict zones become news graveyards in a climate of apparent impunity, it has a crippling effect on reliable information about the forces behind the wars, and the civilian toll, for local populations and for the wider world.
Netanyahu evidently calculates that as long as he has America’s backing, he can prolong Israel’s war with impunity and ensure his own political survival. US President Donald Trump has the leverage that is needed to end the bloodshed. As he heads to Alaska this week to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin in a bid to broker peace in Ukraine, Trump must show the same urgency for peace with Netanyahu as well — there seems to be no other way to stop Israel.
