"I should be happy, I'm not. But I was able to represent my country and speak about the suffering of my people. Everyone tries to do their best," said Motaz Azaiza on June 5. His voice was soft but tired. His body may be in Paris, where he was passing through, but his spirit was still in Gaza. With his square glasses and short-cropped hair, he is one of the most-known faces from the Palestinian enclave.

From October 2023 to January 2024, the 25-year-old with over 18 million followers on Instagram documented Gaza's agony in real-time. He never stopped filming and posting images of the victims of the bombardments, the displacement of the population and the humanitarian catastrophe that befell the narrow strip of land, ravaged in the war launched by Israel in response to the massacres perpetrated by Hamas on October 7, 2023. His raw images contrast with his calm voice. He spoke in English, the language he studied at Al-Azhar University in Gaza.

On June 4, his work was awarded the Freedom Prize in Normandy. Created in 2019 with the International Institute for Human Rights and Peace, the prize rewards a person or organization committed to the defense of freedom. This year, 14,265 young people from 116 countries took part in the vote.

At the end of October, Azaiza photographed a young girl trapped under the rubble of a house in the Nuseirat refugee camp after an Israeli air strike, her face illuminated by the flashlight of a civil defense rescue worker. The image was selected as one of Time magazine's top 10 photos of 2023. He was also named Man of the Year by the Middle East edition of GQ magazine. "I have mixed feelings. I can see that the image of Palestine has evolved in Europe. This is helping to raise awareness among the younger generation. But all I want is for this war to end."

Final farewell

He finally had to take the road of exile. In early December, as the IDF surrounded his neighborhood, he warned that it was the end. "It's about life or death now. I did what I could. We are surrounded by the Israeli tanks. The time for risking your life to bear witness is over. The time for survival has begun. Remember that we are not just [posting] content to be shared, we are a nation being killed," he posted.

On January 23, Azaiza announced his evacuation to Qatar: "This is the last time you'll see me in this heavy, stinking jacket." He posted a final farewell video, shared over 20 million times. "I'm sorry," he said emotionally, taking off his flakjacket marked "press" before embracing his colleagues who stayed behind. These young reporters, often self-taught, are the main purveyors of images from the Gaza Strip, despite Israel's ban on foreign journalists entering the Palestinian territory. "We were a small family meeting every evening at 9 pm on my balcony. We knew each other before the war, but that misfortune brought us much closer together," he recounted wistfully four months later.

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