DUBAI: The BBC’s international editor, Jeremy Bowen, has accused Israel of deliberately preventing journalists from entering Gaza in an attempt to “obfuscate what’s going on, and to inject this notion of doubt into information that comes out.”
Bowen was awarded the Fellowship Award for Outstanding Contribution to Journalism at a Society of Editors conference in the UK on Tuesday.
During his acceptance speech, he said: “Why don’t they let us into Gaza? Because they don’t want us to see it. I think it’s really as simple as that.
“Israel took a bit of flak for that to start with but none now, certainly not with (US President Donald) Trump So, I don’t see that changing anytime soon.”
He praised Palestinian journalists for the “fantastic work” they are doing but said that he and other international journalists also want to report from Gaza. He again alleged that the reason Israeli authorities will not allow the international media into Gaza is because “there’s stuff that they don’t want us to see.” This contrasts sharply with the situation at the start of the conflict, Bowen added.
“Beginning after those Hamas attacks on Oct. 7, they (the Israelis) took us into the border communities,” he said. “I was in Kfar Aza when there was still fighting going on inside it. They had only just started taking out the bodies of the dead Israelis. Why did they let us in there? Because they wanted us to see it.”
In the past 18 months, Bowen said he had been permitted to spend only half a day with the Israeli army inside Gaza. He described the conflict as the “bloodiest war” since “the foundation of the Israeli state of 1948.”
He said that “if the place could open up, people could go through, look at the records, count the graves, exhume the skeletons from under the rubble and then they’d get a better idea. But when the doors shut, these things become very, very difficult.”
It was not the first time Bowen has voiced concerns about the reporting restrictions. During a report from Tel Aviv in Jan. 2025, he said: “One reason I’m standing here and not in Gaza is because the Israelis don’t let international journalists like myself in there to report freely.”
Last year, he was among 55 international journalists who signed an open letter urging Israel and Egypt to provide “free and unfettered access to Gaza for all foreign media.”
They wrote: “We call on the government of Israel to openly state its permission for international journalists to operate in Gaza, and for the Egyptian authorities to allow international journalists access to the Rafah Crossing.
“It’s vital that local journalists’ safety is respected and that their efforts are bolstered by the journalism of members of the international media. The need for comprehensive, on-the-ground reporting of the conflict is imperative.”
