Abdallah Al-Hajj’s hospital room in Doha is large and bright. The white and blue sheet that covers his lower body leaves very little doubt: this 33-year-old Palestinian has both legs amputated. Before being injured in Gaza in February, the photojournalist and videographer who worked notably for the Palestinian daily Al-Qudsdocumented, by drone, the living conditions and destruction of the coastal strip since the start of the war launched by Israel after the bloody Hamas attack on October 7, 2023.
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His photos and videos have been covered 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.”explains Abdallah Al-Hajj, met by The world in the capital of Qatar at the end of May.
So, almost every day, the man, originally from the Zeitoun neighborhood, in the south of Gaza City, walked the destroyed streets and avenues. In February, the compatriots he encountered, hungry, had started to eat food for the animals. “Every time they saw me with my drone and my camera, they asked me to show the world what was happening in Gaza”testifies Abdallah.
One of his videos, showing the destruction in the Al-Shati refugee camp, relayed by the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, attracted a lot of attention. “There is no word”, said the presentation caption of this film, published on the UN agency’s Instagram account on February 17. To achieve it, Abdallah walked around twenty kilometers. “Afterwards, I heard that the Israelis were trying to find the author of this photo”he slips.
“Saved by a good doctor”
A few days later, on February 24, he returned to the same area. After shooting a few images, he packed up his cameras and landed his drone. “The second I put my drone away, I was hit by what seemed to me to be an Israeli reconnaissance plane”, he remembers. At his side, his nephew, Mustafa, aged 18, and two fishermen were injured. Asked by The world in this case, the Israeli army responded that it had “taken out by a fighter plane” a “terrorist cell using a drone, representing an imminent threat to the forces present in the Chati region”. “Hamas, she added, uses drones for various military purposes, including tracking our forces. »
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