Palestinian refugee from the war in Gaza and photojournalist Motaz Azaiza

On World Refugee Day, celebrated Gazan photojournalist reflects on snapshots of war

Since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas conflict in October 2023, the Gaza Strip has faced an unprecedented humanitarian crisis that’s happened largely beyond the spotlight of international media struggling to access the war-torn enclave.

Gazan photojournalist-turned-refugee Motaz Azaiza determined to fill the void, covering the war as it unfolded with his camera.

His pictures have been seen by millions but exposure has come at a terrible cost: “It makes you hate your life more and makes you closer to death more - and it makes you like that you're close to death more because of the people that you are losing,” he says.

Today, Mr. Azaiza lives outside Gaza; he was one of few who have managed to escape the daily struggle for survival there.

“My photos travelled the world but my feet couldn’t touch my homeland,” he says on Instagram, where he has amassed a huge following for his uncompromising images of the war and its impact on ordinary Gazans.

There has been no shortage of material.

Inside Gaza, by January 2024, more than 85 per cent of the population - around 1.9 million people – were displaced as a result of continued fighting and evacuation orders issued by the Israeli military.

After 40 days of war and constant danger despite their “Press” vests, it became clear to Mr. Azaiza that he and other colleagues needed international protection.

“I posted [on Instagram] about it...and all I got was their likes and shares….nobody reached out to help me or to protect me.”

His request to leave Gaza was rejected twice by the Israeli Government, he says. After enduring 108 days of Israeli bombardment, Mr. Azaiza finally managed to escape. When he crossed from Rafah in southern Gaza into Egypt, he had no clear idea of where to go.

He waited at the Rafah crossing for five hours on 22 January, waiting to hear what lay ahead for him. There, the Qatari foreign ministry approached him offering asylum. He boarded a Qatar-bound military flight at Egypt’s El Arish Airport and now resides in the capital, Doha.

“My camera helped a lot of people and it helped me connect to the world,” he says. “I never expected that a picture can change the life of many people, showing the reality on the ground and what is happening.” But if Mr. Azaiza’s pictures have succeeded in connecting the plight of Palestinians to the wider world, it has almost cost him his life many times.

In another life

Mr. Azaiza’s love for photography began as a boy. But while he dreamed of snapping beautiful images in his viewfinder, he maintains that Gaza’s “crisis environment” turned him into a hardened war correspondent instead.

In between taking photographs and video, he also joined the Palestinian Red Crescent as a volunteer and has worked with many local and international NGOs in Gaza, including the US national branch of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA.

Mr. Azaiza’s photographs of Gaza’s people reflect the perilous situation everyone faces in the shattered enclave. Unflinchingly, he has documented events in Gaza as they have unfolded since war erupted nearly 20 months ago, following Hamas-led attacks on Israel.

“It really made me feel good about myself when I'm informing people and the whole world is watching my home through my lens, through my pictures, because I'm trying always to be careful how I represent my people,” he said.

Dark days

Today, even though he is far away from Gaza today, repeated displacement, starvation and anguish have left their mark.

“The first days of the war were the hardest - a lot of times I found myself alone in the street where air strikes around me and I was stuck there. I'm scared…God saved me.” Mr. Azaiza continues.

During the first 100 days of the war in Gaza, people supported one another and there was always something to eat, somewhere, Mr. Azaiza says. And despite constant Israeli bombardment, the community upheld its morality and ethics, he insists.

Fast forward 20 months of hardship and repeated warnings of near-starvation conditions by UN-backed food insecurity experts, it’s clear that things have changed for the worse: “The problem with the aid entering is it can't reach everyone,” he says. “There are no police, no one to protect the aid. There's a lot of thieves. There's a lot of people who are hungry and they feel that nothing has reached them. So they need to take this so they don't feel that they are stealing, they feel like they are fighting for their kids.”

One of the memories that haunts Mr. Azaiza most is seeing mothers searching for the bodies of their sons and daughters after an airstrike, only to find that nothing remains. Mothers could not even weep over their children's bodies, he says.

My camera saved me

It is a thanks to his work that Mr. Azaiza managed to get out of Gaza. “My camera helped me to save myself and my own family,” he insists.

Today, his journey as an activist and online influencer continues to gain momentum. With his growing social media influence – 16.7 million followers on Instagram and growing - he has won awards and travelled the world to raise awareness about the Palestinian people.

But an emotional distance remains, he concedes. “Maybe the worst thing about what is happening in Gaza is that it makes you hate your life more and makes you closer to death more and it makes you like that you're close to death more because of the people that you are losing.”

You want to risk your life, you want to [say], ‘Okay, I don't care, I will die.’

Despite often feeling helpless as the war in Gaza goes on, the campaigning photojournalist is not ready to quit just yet – it’s not what Gazans do: “If we didn't show up for our home today, who will do it? So do we expect others to stand up for like our home? I don't think so.”

The fallen journalists of Gaza

Since war erupted in Gaza in October 2023, 217 Palestinian journalists have been confirmed killed there, according to the UN human rights office, OHCHR. Just last month, nine Palestinian journalists were killed, making it one of the deadliest weeks for media workers in Gaza.

“At the beginning, I was very sad and tired of what is happening or the loss you are losing every day and you're shocked. But then you start to lose your emotions you feel like you’re a machine. You don't feel anything.”

If there is any comfort to be had from the situation in Gaza, it’s that the absence of international reporters has nurtured trust in local voices, such as citizen journalists and Palestinian reporters.

Gazans “started to see the truth from the eyes of the own people, the people who own the land, the people who are like the original people of Gaza,” he insists.

Rejecting criticism about the frequently graphic nature of his images, not least those showing the devastating fallout of an airstrike, Mr. Azaiza insists that the world needs to see what has been happening in Gaza, since nothing else seemed to be working.

Relentless disinformation campaigns appeared to have the upper hand, he said, despite strong condemnation by the international community of Israeli bombardment and a military campaign that UN rights chief Volker Türk High Commissioner has maintained is tantamount to ethnic cleansing.

ends

Palestinian refugee from the war in Gaza and photojournalist Motaz Azaiza

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