‘We die with Gaza’: They kept their cameras rolling. Now, they can’t afford bread

In a place where bearing witness has long meant risking one’s life, journalists in Gaza now face a more immediate threat: starvation. Nearly ten months into the war, the Israel-Hamas conflict has hollowed out the territory’s food supplies, decimated its infrastructure, and turned survival into a negotiation that demands grave sacrifices.

More than 232 journalists have been killed in Gaza since October 2023, making the war the deadliest-ever for media professionals. A report by the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs’ Costs of War project, released in April this year, stated that the attack on journalists in Gaza has intensified a trend where local reporters — often underpaid and under-resourced — face the greatest risks.

As Israel continues to prevent international media professionals from accessing its territory, Palestinian reporters, many of them as freelancers, live in the same conditions as Gazan residents, and have become sole witnesses to the conflict unfolding in Gaza.

‘Allow journalists in and out of Gaza’: A joint statement

Earlier on Wednesday, four of the world’s leading media organisations, BBC, Agence France-Presse (AFP), Reuters and the Associated Press, issued a joint statement expressing their desperate concern for local journalists who are now struggling to survive after access to basic human needs, such as food, clean water and medical services, collapsed in Gaza.

“For many months, these independent journalists have been the world’s eyes and ears on the ground in Gaza. They are now facing the same dire circumstances as those they are covering,” the statement read.

“Journalists endure many deprivations and hardships in war zones. We are deeply alarmed that the threat of starvation is now one of them. We once again urge the Israeli authorities to allow journalists in and out of Gaza. It is essential that adequate food supplies reach the people there,” it added.

A 2-year-old malnourished child, poses for a photo at his family home in Shati refugee camp in Gaza City on Wednesday, July 23, 2025. (AP Photo)

‘Resistance isn’t a choice: it’s a necessity’

One of the journalists from AFP, Bashar Taleb, last week posted on Facebook, “I no longer have the strength to work for the media. My body is thin and I can’t work anymore.”

Describing the helplessness of the media organisations to support its journalists in Gaza amid imposed restrictions by Israel, AFP wrote: “Even though these journalists receive a monthly salary from AFP, it’s no longer enough to buy food, or they have to pay completely exorbitant price… We may hear about their deaths at any moment, and this is unbearable.”

The editorial committee of the AFP also shared the ordeal of a female journalist based in Gaza, who is holding on “to testify” as long as she can. “Every time I leave the tent to cover an event, do an interview or document a story, I don’t know if I’ll come back alive,” it stated quoting the journalist, adding that she is “exercising” her “profession, to speak for the voiceless, to document the truth despite all the attempts to silence it. Here, resistance isn’t a choice: it’s a necessity.”

AFP currently maintains ten freelance journalists in Gaza, including, one writer, three photographers, and six video professionals, as per TIME.

An Israeli activist bangs a pot with a wooden spoon to protest the starvation of Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip, outside of the US Embassy branch office in Tel Aviv, Israel, Thursday, July 24, 2025. (AP Photo)

AFP, in its statement, further declared that none of the professionals at their organisation “remember witnessing colleagues die of hunger” in the past.

Moreover, AFP’s global news director Phil Chetwynd, speaking to NPR, shared, “They’re spending so much time and energy trying to source food and also they just feel so weak. They talk about constant headaches, constant dizziness. So just the ability physically to, you know, get to a story is diminished.”

Taleb on Saturday requested assistance from the social community on Facebook of a nutritional doctor to help her sister, who was “losing her consciousness.”

‘Taken to drinking water with a little salt’

Three freelance Palestinian journalists from the BBC also shared how they are struggling to feed their families and often go two days or more without eating, BBC News reported.

“All of the men have kept their cameras running, sending us vital footage, even on days when their close relatives have been killed, they have lost their homes, or have been fleeing from Israeli military advances with their families,” the report stated, highlighting the plight of the journalists working for the organisation.

A veteran journalist, a few cameramen, and other media professionals in the Gaza City have been struggling to feed themselves as well as their families, leading to fatigue, poor psychological state, and headaches, thereby, hampering their ability to report. Some of them describe these times as a huge crisis of “suffering and deprivation.”

According to a BBC reporter, “Two of the men say they have taken to drinking water with a little salt to try to suppress their hunger. One says he can sometimes buy a 50g biscuit for his daily meal but this costs 30 shekels ($9; £6.60).”

Sharing the exhausting process of money transfers, which now involves using money merchants, another Gaza City cameraman explained to the BBC, “If I need cash, it’s mostly not available, but when it is, it’s accompanied by a withdrawal fee of 45 per cent.”

Palestinian women care for their malnourished babies at the Friends of the Patient Hospital in Gaza City on Wednesday, July 23, 2025. (AP Photo)

‘I’m breaking, just like Gaza is breaking now’

One of the on-ground reporters from Al Jazeera went reporting across the market in Gaza, only to end up buying a falafel wrap, costing less than $1.

A stroll around the market street, enquiring about the sky-rocketing prices of food supplies, which the journalist claimed were “looted stuff from the aid trucks,” revealed that the costs of a bag of spaghetti cost $10, half-a-kilo lentil bag $15, one flour bag $17, a quarter-kilo onions $10, potatoes $15.

“People don’t just not have jobs, but they don’t have money to pay for these products,” Al Jazeera reported. The one meal that’s available for the people in Gaza is the sandwich or falafel wraps, as the reporter claimed, costs less than a dollar for two pieces, however, is insufficient for people in these starving times.

“This is the cash that I’ve right now… I am not going through a middleman. Sometimes I sleep on empty stomachs, and sometimes I don’t sleep at all,” the reporter said, describing his ordeal while reporting from the ground in the war-torn country.

“I stay strong in front of the camera but, behind it, I am breaking, just like Gaza is breaking now,” the journalist declared.

On July 22, Al Jazeera Media Network called upon the “journalistic community, press freedom organisations, and relevant legal bodies to take decisive action to halt the forced starvation and crimes against journalists and media professionals in Gaza.”

Palestinians hold onto an aid truck returning to Gaza City from the northern Gaza Strip on Tuesday, July 22, 2025. (AP Photo)

“I haven’t stopped covering for a moment in 21 months,” an Al Jazeera correspondent wrote online. “I am drowning in hunger, trembling in exhaustion, and resisting the fainting that follows me every moment … Gaza is dying. And we die with it.”

Highlighting heart-wrenching video-reportage by Al Jazeera journalists from Gaza, the statement quoted Dr. Mostefa Souag, Director General of the network, “The journalistic community and the world bear an immense responsibility… If we fail to act now, we risk a future where there may be no one left to tell our stories. Our inaction will be recorded in history as a monumental failure to protect our fellow journalists and a betrayal of the principles that every journalist strives to uphold.”

The statement remarked five Al Jazeera journalists have been killed by the Israeli forces since October 2023. “Yet, these courageous journalists, along with their colleagues, refuse to succumb to the threats and pressure tactics employed by the Israeli authorities to silence them,” it further read.

‘Until the youngest child is fed’

Another journalist based in Gaza went on a hunger strike to draw global attention to the suffering of civilians. “I can’t eat while children are dying of hunger in front of me,” Wadie Abu Saud told Anadolu Agency, state-run Turkish news agency, as quoted in the Palestine Chronicle.

The reporter, who now survives merely on saltwater, began his strike six days ago, saying he would continue the movement “until the youngest child in the Gaza Strip has something to eat.” He also urged fellow “free people of the world to stand up to their responsibilities and join the ‘Empty Stomachs movement’ in solidarity with the oppressed, the starving, and the thirsty in the Gaza Strip.”

The hunger crisis in Gaza

With 470,000 people facing catastrophic hunger, and 100,000 women and children suffering from severe acute malnutrition, in desperate need of treatment, the food crisis in Gaza is fast becoming one of the worst in modern history, as per the Associated Press report.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has denounced global inaction, calling the suffering in Gaza a “moral crisis that challenges the global conscience.” The BBC, quoting Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry reported the death of 45 Palestinians since Sunday as a result of malnutrition.

United Nations Women too claimed, over a post on social media platforms, “1 million women and girls are starving in Gaza.” “We continue to demand the delivery of urgent lifesaving aid #ForAllWomenAndGirls in Gaza, an immediate ceasefire, and the release of all hostages.”

Palestinians carry sacks of flour unloaded from a humanitarian aid convoy that reached Gaza City from the northern Gaza Strip, Saturday, July 26, 2025. (AP Photo)

Even though UN officials and aid groups have warned that Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are on the brink of famine, they have stayed away from declaring one explicitly. The impossibility to gather data for experts in some cases amid limited access to the territory; absence of clarity that hunger is the cause of death; eroded and incomplete data and surveillance systems; among others, remain a few of the reasons for the same, AP noted.

The hunger crisis in Gaza has intensified since March this year, when the aid blockade began, pushing Gazans toward prolonged food shortages, illness, and death, as per the World Health Organisation. In May, nearly 17,000 pregnant and breastfeeding mothers were expected to require treatment for acute malnutrition over the next eleven months, if the dire situation continued.

Earlier this week, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) also sounded the alarm, reporting that one in four children and pregnant or breastfeeding women screened at its Gaza clinics were malnourished. “Rates of severe malnutrition in children under five have tripled in the last two weeks alone,” MSF said, blaming what it described as Israel’s “policy of starvation”.

On July 23, more than 100 organisations, including Oxfam, urging governments to act, sounded an alarm: “open all land crossings; restore the full flow of food, clean water, medical supplies, shelter items, and fuel through a principled, UN-led mechanism; end the siege, and agree to a ceasefire now,” a release by Oxfam International stated.

Israel, along with the United States, early this year, established what the UN called, a “controversial” new Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) aid operation, which Guterres termed to be “inherently unsafe.” “It is killing people,” he said.

An Israeli soldier stands beside humanitarian aid packages awaiting pickup on the Palestinian side of the Kerem Shalom crossing in the Gaza Strip, Thursday, July 24, 2025. (AP Photo)

Israel, though, lifted an 11-week aid blockade on Gaza on May 19, allowing limited UN deliveries to resume, more than 400 Palestinians were killed while seeking aid from both the UN and GHF operations, as per the UN. Majority of them were trying to reach GHF sites, Reuters reported.

About 900 Gazans were killed in recent weeks as they tried to gather food, with most deaths linked to private aid sites run by GHF, the UN human rights office, OHCHR, said, as on July 15, 2025. Moreover, Israeli forces forcibly displaced nearly two million Palestinians with the most recent mass displacement order issued on July 20, UN highlighted.

Recent steps by nations

UK: Prime Minister United Kingdom Keir Starmer Saturday confirmed the government will be “taking forward” plans to airdrop aid into Gaza and evacuate children who need medical assistance in an effort to relieve what Downing Street called an “appalling situation,” The Guardian reported.

Speaking to the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, early morning, the prime minister outlined the UK’s intentions to work with Jordan to carry out the plans.

This comes after Israeli army officials said they would allow foreign countries to resume airdropping aid into Gaza “in the coming days”.

However, the head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) strongly criticised the use of airdrops to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza, calling them “inefficient” and a “distraction” from addressing the root causes of the crisis, as per the report.

“Airdrops will not reverse the deepening starvation,” said UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini. “They are expensive, inefficient and can even kill starving civilians. It is a distraction and screensmoke.”

Moreover, Starmer Saturday rejected calls to immediately recognise a Palestinian state, after 221 MPs signed a letter urging the British government to recognise the state of Palestine at a meeting of the UN next week, The Guardian reported.

Palestinians struggle to get donated food at a community kitchen, in Gaza City, northern Gaza Strip, Saturday, July 26, 2025. (AP Photo)

India: India this Thursday called for an immediate ceasefire, uninterrupted humanitarian aid into Gaza and release of Israeli hostages by Hamas to address the deepening humanitarian crisis in the Palestinian territory.

While speaking during the open debate on ‘Situation in the Middle East, including the Palestinian question’ at the UN Security Council, India’s Permanent Representative to the UN, Ambassador Parvathaneni Harish said that mere pauses in hostilities are not enough.

This turnaround comes after India abstained from voting during the resolution at the UNGA for a ceasefire in Gaza last month.

Harish also expressed hope that an upcoming UN conference on the Israel-Palestine conflict would pave the way for “concrete steps” towards achieving a two-State solution, which India has always advocated.

US and Israel: At a time when the hunger crisis is worsening, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump stepped up to Friday to abandon Gaza ceasefire negotiations with Hamas.

Both the leaders declared it had become clear that the Palestinian militants did not want a deal.

Netanyahu said Israel was now mulling “alternative” options to achieve its goals of bringing its hostages home from Gaza and ending Hamas rule in the enclave. Israel and US also withdrew their delegations on Thursday from the ceasefire talks in Qatar, Reuters reported.

Trump said he believed Hamas leaders would now be “hunted down”, telling reporters: “Hamas really didn’t want to make a deal. I think they want to die. And it’s very bad. And it got to be to a point where you’re going to have to finish the job.”

Woman looks at the camera as she sits with her child in an area in the northern Gaza Strip, while waiting for trucks with humanitarian aid to arrive, in Gaza City, Friday, July 25, 2025. (AP Photo)

France: French President Emmanuel Macron, meanwhile, announced that Paris would become the first major Western power to recognise an independent Palestinian state. Trump, however, dismissed Macron’s move.

Italy: Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, said on Saturday that recognising the state of Palestine before it is established could be counterproductive, according to updates in The Guardian.

Others: Mediators Qatar and Egypt have said that there had been some progress in the latest round of talks. They said suspensions were a normal part of the process and they were committed to continuing to try to reach a ceasefire in partnership with the US, as per a Reuters report.

Israel launched its assault on Gaza after Hamas-led fighters stormed Israeli towns near the border, killing around 1,200 people and capturing 251 hostages on October 7, 2023. Since then, Israeli forces have killed nearly 60,000 people in Gaza, according to its health ministry, and reduced much of the enclave to ruins.