Amira Hass, Israel
By Global Journalist Staff Posted Sat, Apr 1 2000
Amira Hass has spent much of the last decade living in Palestinian communities of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, from where she has fearlessly and sensitively reported on the Palestinians’ progress from intifada toward independence. Her great personal courage, unwavering professionalism and commitment to defending the public’s right to know has won her recognition in Israel and beyond.
Assigned by Israel’s most respected daily, Ha’aretz, to cover the Gaza Strip in 1991, Hass soon decided to live in Gaza for part of each month. She stayed at private homes all through the Strip. “Hass dropped into a war zone armed with nothing but her compassion,” said Tom Segev, a prominent Israeli journalist and historian.
After the signing of the Israeli-Palestinian peace accord in December 1993, Hass moved permanently to Gaza, and she was the first and only Israeli journalist to live in the Palestinian territories. “To most Israelis, my move seemed outlandish, even crazy, for they believed I was surely putting my life at risk,” Hass wrote in her book, Drinking the Sea at Gaza: Days and Nights in a Land Under Siege.
However, convinced that Israelis needed to know the truth about the plight of the Palestinian people, Hass doggedly defied the Israeli occupation authorities, which initially refused to provide her information. She managed to file her daily reports in spite of frequent curfews, prolonged closures of the Occupied Territories, periodic violent demonstrations and armed clashes. With the establishment of the Palestinian National Authority, she found herself confronted and often restricted by another governmental structure. On several occasions, the PNA complained that she was too critical of them and warned that her life was in danger.
Hass, the child of Holocaust survivors, was born in Jerusalem in 1956. After studying history at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and the University of Tel Aviv, she worked at various teaching jobs before beginning her journalistic career in 1989 as a staff editor at Ha’aretz. In addition to her editing position, she began to write regular articles on the Occupied Territories in 1991. She now covers the West Bank from the town of Ramallah, where she moved in January 1997. She is continuing her difficult and dangerous work, which is closely monitored by the PNA, the Israeli Defence Forces and armed dissident groups in the Palestinian territories.
Observing Palestinian life from the eyes of the ordinary person in the street, Hass has provided readers in Israel and the rest of the world with a unique glimpse of the towns and refugee camps of Gaza and the West Bank.
With single-minded determination and apparent disregard for the dangers she faces daily, she reports on evolving Palestinian self-government, growing alienation between the Palestinian people and its leadership and the activities of Hamas and other dissident groups. By informing the public, without whose support no peace is possible, her reporting contributes in a direct and meaningful way to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.