{"id":11249,"date":"2024-08-22T11:32:06","date_gmt":"2024-08-22T09:32:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hirondelle.org\/i-had-to-flee-six-times-in-three-months"},"modified":"2024-08-22T11:32:06","modified_gmt":"2024-08-22T09:32:06","slug":"i-had-to-flee-six-times-in-three-months","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hirondelle.org\/en\/i-had-to-flee-six-times-in-three-months","title":{"rendered":"“I HAD TO FLEE SIX TIMES IN THREE MONTHS”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Palestinian and Egyptian journalist\u00a0Youmna El Sayed is the correspondent\u00a0for Al Jazeera English in Gaza. In exile in\u00a0Cairo since January 2024, she tells of the\u00a0dangers she had to overcome as a reporter and mother in a deadly conflict for\u00a0civilians, and how she tries to recover.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI was living in Gaza City with my husband and our\u00a0four children aged 12, 11, 8 and 5. When the war\u00a0broke out in early October, bombardments were\u00a0indiscriminate, we didn\u2019t know what place could\u00a0be safe. As journalists, we were directly attacked\u00a0by Israeli forces to silence reporting. Our offices,\u00a0homes and neighbourhoods were the target of\u00a0direct strikes. In three months, I had to flee six\u00a0times with my family. After evacuating to the\u00a0south of Wadi Gaza at the beginning of the war,\u00a0we decided to go back to our apartment in Gaza\u00a0City: there was a lack of water and electricity in the\u00a0south and, if we were to die, let it be in dignity.\u00a0Another time, we had to flee to Khan Younes\u00a0walking 6-7 km with my children through shootings and the bodies of whole families killed and\u00a0still lying on the ground. And when we arrived in\u00a0Rafah early December, winter was coming, there were no more warm clothes to buy, my younger\u00a0child was cold. Finally, thanks to my father who\u00a0could put pressure in Egypt and pay a lot of\u00a0money, we managed to be evacuated to Cairo.<\/p>\n

Now I\u2019m trying to rest and to recover physically\u00a0and mentally. I am still in position at Al Jazeera,\u00a0they leave me time to recover. But I cannot report,\u00a0because Al Jazeera has no license to work in\u00a0Egypt. My situation, as well as my future, is very\u00a0uncertain. The whole Gaza strip has been\u00a0destroyed and has become unliveable: there are\u00a0no more roads, hospitals, schools. After losing a\u00a0whole year, my children still don\u2019t know if they will\u00a0attend school in Egypt or elsewhere in September.\u00a0Most of all, I am trying to overcome and to cure\u00a0my survival guilt: I did my best to report inside\u00a0Gaza but at some point I decided to leave as a\u00a0mother, to save my children. Now I feel it\u2019s\u00a0important for me to give conferences and interviews, to raise conscience worldwide about the\u00a0situation in Gaza. Many of my colleagues working\u00a0in Gaza now had to move again to the central city\u00a0to work from Al Aqsa hospital after they were\u00a0ordered to evacuate from Rafah. They continue to\u00a0work in dire conditions with the least necessities\u00a0available.\u201d<\/p>\n

This extract is taken from the 13th issue of Mediation, entitled \u2018Structuring exiled journalism in a more authoritarian world\u2019, which you can find here<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Palestinian and Egyptian journalist\u00a0Youmna El Sayed is the correspondent\u00a0for Al Jazeera English in Gaza. In exile in\u00a0Cairo since January 2024, she tells of the\u00a0dangers she had to overcome as a reporter and mother in a deadly conflict for\u00a0civilians, and how she tries to recover. \u201cI was living in Gaza City with my husband and our\u00a0four […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":11250,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[196],"tags":[239],"class_list":["post-11249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-our-news","tag-how-we-work-information-dialogue"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-21 01:50:26","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hirondelle.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hirondelle.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hirondelle.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hirondelle.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hirondelle.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11249"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hirondelle.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11249\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hirondelle.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hirondelle.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hirondelle.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hirondelle.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}