Abdallah Al-Hajj's hospital room in Doha was large and bright. The white and blue sheet covering his lower body left little doubt: The 33-year-old Palestinian was a double-leg amputee. Before being wounded in Gaza in February, the photojournalist and videographer who worked for the Palestinian daily Al-Quds among other media, had been documenting, with a drone, the living conditions and the destruction of the coastal strip since the start of the war launched by Israel after Hamas' bloody attack on October 7, 2023.
His photos and videos were picked up by numerous Palestinian and international media. "My colleagues told me that this work was dangerous and that I risked being targeted by the Israeli army, like other journalists. But I told them that my personal decision was to show the reality of the situation, which was more important than my safety," Al-Hajj explained calmly when he met with Le Monde in the Qatari capital at the end of May.
And so, almost every day, the man from the Zeitoun district in the south of Gaza City had walked the destroyed streets and avenues. In February, the starving locals he came across had started eating animal feed. "Every time they saw me with my drone and camera, they asked me to show the world what was happening in Gaza," said Al-Hajj.
One of his videos, showing the destruction in the Al-Shati refugee camp and which was picked up by the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA), attracted a lot of attention. "There are no words," said the caption introducing the film, posted on the UN agency's Instagram account on February 17. To get the footage, Al-Hajj walked some 20 kilometers. "Afterward, I heard that the Israelis were trying to find the creator of this clip," he said.
A few days later, on February 24, he returned to the same area to continue filming. After shooting a few images, he put his cameras away and landed his drone. "The second I put my drone away, I was hit by what I thought was an Israeli reconnaissance plane," he recalled. Alongside him, his 18-year-old nephew Mustafa and two fishermen were also wounded. Asked by Le Monde about the case, the Israeli army replied that it had "eliminated by an IAF aircraft" a "terrorist cell using a drone, posing an imminent threat to forces in the Shati area." "Hamas employs drones for various military purposes, including locating our forces," it added.
With serious injuries to both legs, Al-Hajj lost consciousness. When the ambulance arrived, rescuers judged that he had very little chance of survival. As there was no room in the vehicle, they put him on the roof of the ambulance on its way to Al-Shifa Hospital. Then, as he was being picked up for transport to the morgue, someone noticed a faint heartbeat. Al-Hajj was quickly transferred to the operating room. His nephew and one of the fishermen died of their injuries. With both legs amputated above the knees, Al-Hajj survived. "I was saved by a good doctor who kept giving me hope. His name was Ahmed Al-Maqdameh." Al-Hajj's home, which housed the archives of 16 years of his photographic work, was destroyed two days after he was wounded.
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