Press association condemns Israel for maintaining ban on media access to Gaza
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The US-based non-profit Foreign Press Association on Tuesday expressed “profound disappointment” with the Israeli government for continuing to bar unrestricted international media access to the Gaza Strip, despite a ceasefire being in place, Anadolu reports.
“Instead of presenting a plan for allowing journalists into Gaza independently and letting us work alongside our brave Palestinian colleagues, the government has decided once again to lock us out,” the association of US-based foreign correspondents said in a statement. “This comes even when a ceasefire is now in place.”
Israeli authorities have restricted independent access for international journalists to Gaza since the war began in 2023, allowing only a limited number of reporters to enter under military escort on a case-by-case basis.
According to Israeli media, the government told the Supreme Court on Sunday that the ban should remain in effect due to what it described as “security risks.”
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The FPA said it plans to submit a “robust response” to the court in the coming days.
“The FPA is confident that the court will provide justice in light of the continuous infringement of the fundamental principles of freedom of speech, the public’s right to know and free press,” said the statement.
In early December 2025, Gaza’s government media office said 257 Palestinian journalists had been killed during the Israeli genocide on Gaza that began on Oct. 8, 2023, and lasted for two years until a ceasefire agreement took effect in October 2025.
Since the ceasefire agreement came into effect, the Israeli army has committed hundreds of violations, killing 420 Palestinians and wounding 1,184 others, according to the Health Ministry.
The ceasefire halted Israel’s two-year war that killed nearly 71,400 Palestinians, most of them women and children, injured more than 171,200 others, and left the enclave in ruins.
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
