Press association condemns Israel’s continued ban on media access to Gaza
An international media association has denounced the Israeli government’s continued refusal to lift its ban on unrestricted media access to Gaza, despite the ceasefire in the embattled enclave.
The Foreign Press Association (FPA) issued a statement on Tuesday expressing its “profound disappointment” with the government, which had told the Supreme Court two days earlier that the ban should be maintained due to “security reasons”.
Israel, which has barred foreign journalists from independently entering Gaza since the war started in October 2023, was responding to an FPA petition seeking free and unfettered access for foreign journalists to the devastated territory.
The organisation, which represents journalists from international news organisations working in Israel, Gaza and the occupied West Bank, pledged to submit a “robust response” to the court in the coming days.
“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. This comes even when a ceasefire is now in place,” the FPA statement said.
The Israeli government, which has allowed only a limited number of journalists embedded with its military to work in Gaza on a case-by-case basis, said its court submission was “based on the position of the defence establishment”, noting that allowing journalists into the enclave could hinder the search for the remains of the last Israeli captive.
The FPA submitted its petition to the court in September 2024. The court has granted several extensions to the government.
Last month, it set January 4 as a final deadline for the government to present a plan for media access to Gaza.
The International Federation of Journalists has reported that Palestine was the deadliest place to work as a journalist in 2025, reporting that 56 Palestinian media professionals were killed over the course of the year.
Since the war broke out, nearly 300 journalists and media workers have been killed in Gaza, according to Shireen.ps, a monitoring website named after Al Jazeera’s veteran correspondent Shireen Abu Akleh, who was killed in the occupied West Bank in 2022.
Health of Palestine Action hunger strikers deteriorating, supporters say
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/jan/06/health-palestine-action-hunger-strikers-deteriorating-supporters-say
Palestine Action-affiliated prisoners taking part in a hunger strike have shown an alarming deterioration in their health as one of them has entered the third month of refusing food, supporters have said.
Heba Muraisi, 31, who is on day 65 of her hunger strike, is said to be suffering from muscle spasms and breathing problems, while Kamran Ahmed, on day 58, has reported intermittent hearing loss.
The third remaining prisoner taking part in the protest is Lewie Chiaramello, 22, who has type 1 diabetes and so has been fasting every other day for 44 days.
Dr James Smith, an emergency physician and lecturer at University College London, said the three were already “well into the critical phase”, which he described as beyond three weeks, and he warned that “things can decline very quickly and irreversibly”.
Let’s be clear: if the Palestine Action hunger strikers die, the government will bear moral responsibility
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jan/07/palestine-action-hunger-strikers-government
The three remaining hunger strikers have been convicted of nothing. Yet with astonishing cruelty, ministers refuse to listen to their reasonable demands
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The limbo of remand is often devastating to prisoners’ wellbeing. Government figures, for example, show that the rate of suicide among remanded prisoners is more than twice that among sentenced prisoners. Extreme periods of remand like these are an offence against justice.
This is one aspect of what campaigners call “process as punishment”, an approach that now dominates the treatment of protest groups. Even if you are never convicted of a crime, your life is made hell if you dare, visibly and publicly, to dissent.
The three prisoners, and others charged with the same offences, are being held under “terrorist conditions”. This means they are allowed only minimal communications and visits. They’ve also been banned from prison jobs for “security reasons”, denied books, newspapers, library and gym visits and subjected to “non-association orders”. In October, Muraisi was suddenly transferred from HMP Bronzefield, 18 miles from London, where her family lives, to New Hall prison in Yorkshire, which is too far away for her sick mother to visit. After she had been moved, she was told it was because of the risk of association with another prisoner on the same wing at Bronzefield.
Yet none of the hunger strikers has been charged with, let alone sentenced for, terrorist offences. They have been charged with ordinary criminal offences, such as burglary, criminal damage and violent disorder. Muraisi and Ahmed are alleged to have broken into a factory run by Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest weapons manufacturer, and damaged equipment, while Chiaramello is alleged to have entered RAF Brize Norton during a protest in which Palestine Action sprayed warplanes with paint. These events took place before Palestine Action was proscribed as a terrorist group, a highly controversial decision that is being challenged in court: the decision is expected very soon. But never mind the presumption of innocence, never mind the presumption against retrospective application of the law: because the CPS says there is a “terrorism connection”, they’re being treated as if they were convicted terrorists.
