Dr. Ibrahim Rabaia is the manager of the Palestinian Media Coordination Group and an assistant professor of political science and international relations at Birzeit University. He served as editor-in-chief of Al-Hayat newspaper until July 2025 and editor-in-chief of the journal “Palestinian Affairs” until the fall of 2024, with 20 years of experience in local and international media as a reporter, editor, columnist, and analyst.
Audio Transcript
Excerpt from interview with Bob Lederer
Atlanta, Georgia
June 18, 2025
Thank you for this opportunity. And when we talk about the Palestinian media, actually, I can say that we are passing a very, very difficult time. I am Ibrahim Rabaia.
I am the director of the Palestinian Media Coordination Group, which includes the Palestinian Journalist Syndicate, the Publishers Association and the Radio Stations Association, besides the Palestinian or Birzeit Media Development Center.
Since October 8th of 2023, we lost around 226 media workers in Gaza and the West Bank. And actually, this is the most difficult period for the Palestinian media ever. Even we had a very, very difficult violations before. And every year we recorded violations.
in our media institutions and mainly the Palestinian Journalist Syndicate violations and thousands of violations about Palestinian or against Palestinian media. Most of these colleagues were killed by a systematic targeting in Gaza Strip. And the Palestinian Journalist Syndicate, the BGS, recorded evidences about this, about this systematic targeting in Gaza.
Also around 440 were injured, some lost their limbs and it is difficult to deal with their injuries in Gaza due to the collapse in health sector. The PJS worked with international partners, international institutions to send several outside but this became impossible since the collapse of the last ceasefire.
around 47 journalists remain in detention now, and this is out of 80, the BGS recorded by last May. Most are under administrative detention with no charge. And we talk about this component mainly. This is where the censorship, where is the restrictions on media. Most of these colleagues are from the West Bank and most were arrested due to their media work, their maybe products, media products, and also their activities on social media platforms.
So, when we talk about the administrative detention, this is what is the situation since October 8th, 2023 and mainly based on the opinion due to the Israeli restrictions, the military restrictions mainly, which is targeting the journalists themselves, the media outlets by preventing specific outlets from working in the West Bank, in Gaza and in Israel, for example, we talk about Al Jazeera and also and also preventing international media from entering Gaza Strip and also with more restrictions on the West Bank these days.
The BGS have reported also unprecedented rates of torture and humiliation against the colleagues who were arrested in this period.
We talk also about the sector itself, the media sector itself in Gaza. Now the media sector in Gaza is completely destroyed. We lost around 82% of our media outlets in Gaza.
And for example, the publishers and the radio stations, their early estimated losses are around $125 million. This included institutions, buildings, instruments, equipment, everything.
Also, this placement forced the media workers to move from the north, where 85% of the media outlets were concentrated, to the south, where there is no infrastructure. So we established, and mainly the PGS with the UNESCO and the international organizations,
the IFJ, they established the solidarity centers. It is a place where the basic needs of journalists are available to work there. These places even are not safe because there is monitors, censorship for the media production which comes from Gaza and even from the West Bank.
Also, the PGS worked on supporting the journalists themselves. We are talking about around 4,000 members supported by personnel leads. This is their priorities, including tents, including food, and what they need in this very difficult situation.
Also, we are talking about the situation in the West Bank. The situation in the West Bank is more complicated because we have two kinds of maybe censorship. The first is the military censorship by the Israeli forces, by the Israeli military institutions. And this is maybe dynamic. They change everything. And they bought some legal framework, which can be used translated or clarified in several ways. So they have this kind of wide legal framework to use it as they want. So there is no clear restrictions for the Palestinian journalists. The second is the informal censorship which comes from the settlers and their institutions, their platforms and the hate speech comes against journalists in name mainly and we recorded in the Palestinian media institutions several cases by attacking and targeting Palestinian journalists in the recent was attacking Assam Rimawi. Assam Rimawi is one of the prominent photographers here in Palestine and he was covering settlers attack against one of the villages around Ramallah and they know him because they shared his photo and there is a hate speech against him so when they saw him they targeted him and they broke his head he was in the ICU in the hospital for a week and this was one of the recent and difficult cases as Sam said he has never witnessed such kind of violations, such kind of systematic targeting. He’s covering the situation in the West Bank for the last 20 years at least, but he’s saying there is kind of escalation.
and unprecedented escalation against Palestinian journalists in the West Bank. This is not the only case and not the only situation. There was a targeting for journalists in several areas in the West Bank, such as Jenin and Tulkarem, on different occasions, because You know, there is Israeli operation against Janine since last January.
And there was systematic targeting for specific journalists there, preventing journalists from entering specific areas such as Jenin camp, Tulkeren camp, Noor Shams camp, and also arresting journalists there in the field for hours or days.
Also, we are talking about, as I said, Al Jazeera before, preventing the journalists there in Al Jazeera from working in the field, not only the media outlet itself. also the workers but as I said now we are talking about the AI era so there is a systematic maybe kind of censorship for the Palestinian journalists and the content by AI and for the last weeks the spokesman of the Israeli army was talking about 3,000 recorded cases based on the social media, maybe content for Palestinians, including journalists, for them, for the Israeli army. And each time they come to the house of the journalist and they arrest him from his house, no response.
No worry, where is him in area A, B, C, in any city. So they reach anywhere in the West Bank, in Gaza now, and Alistair Palestinian and journalists. Also, there was reports about using AI for the systematic targeting. And I think Human Rights Watch recorded this before. They talk about Lavender, AI app, and other apps too.
maybe reach intellectuals and several maybe activists in Gaza including journalists and this kind of systematic targeting as I said the pages recorded there is there is high high rates now for the Palestinian journalists of maybe fears fears from the protection, they need protection, they need support, international support, they need code of ethics and more pressure on the Israeli authorities to maybe implement the international laws, the international maybe codes of protecting journalists in such situation in the West Bank and Gaza. Thank you.