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LONDON: More than 100 prominent journalists have called for “immediate and unsupervised foreign press access to the Gaza Strip,” adding to mounting pressure on Israel to lift its blockade on the territory, where Tel Aviv also faces charges of war crimes and genocide.

The petition has been launched under the Freedom to Report initiative which advocates for protecting journalists and upholding press independence globally.

The signatories include Sky News special correspondent Alex Crawford, broadcaster Mehdi Hasan, CNN’s Christiane Amanpour and Clarissa Ward, and legendary war photographer Don McCullin.

“This is not only about Gaza. It is about defending the universal right to independent, on-the-ground reporting in conflict zones everywhere,” read the statement published on Monday.

“Gaza is the most urgent case, but it is not the only one. It reflects the gravest pattern of silencing journalists and restricting the press. If the democratic world truly intends to push back against this erosion of freedom, it must not turn a blind eye to Gaza.”

With Israel continuing to deny international media access, global coverage has relied almost exclusively on Gaza-based Palestinian journalists. They have worked for nearly 22 months under extreme conditions, facing shortages of food, water, electricity, and internet access, and daily risks to their lives.

Israel has so far resisted calls from human rights groups and media organizations to allow entry to foreign reporters.

But the pressure has intensified in recent weeks amid growing international concern over what UN agencies and humanitarian experts have described as a “man-made famine” caused by the Israeli blockade on aid.

Last month, major international news agencies — including AFP, The Associated Press, Reuters, and the BBC — issued a joint statement calling for a humanitarian corridor to evacuate their local teams, some of whom were struggling to find enough food to survive.

Since Israel’s latest war on Gaza began, nearly 200 journalists have been killed — most of them Palestinian — making this the deadliest conflict for the press ever recorded.

Beyond calling for immediate access and protection of media workers, the petition adds that if “belligerent parties” continue to ignore these demands, journalists would seek to enter Gaza without consent.

They would try to gain access “by any legitimate means, independently, collectively, or in coordination with humanitarian or civil society actors.”

“These restrictions deprive the world of an impartial account and obstruct the path to accountability,” the letter stated.

“Unrestricted, independent access for foreign journalists is urgently needed, not only to document the unfolding atrocities but to ensure that the truth of this war is not dictated by those who control the weapons and the narrative.”

ROME: : Award-winning Israeli author David Grossman called his country’s campaign in Gaza “genocide” and said he was using the term with a “broken heart.”

This came days after a major Israeli rights group also used the same term, amid growing global alarm over starvation in the besieged territory.

“For many years, I refused to use that term: ‘genocide’,” the prominent writer and peace activist told Italian daily La Repubblica in an interview published on Friday.

“But now, after the images I have seen and after talking to people who were there, I can’t help using it.”

Grossman told the paper he was using the word “with immense pain and with a broken heart.”

“This word is an avalanche: once you say it, it just gets bigger, like an avalanche. And it adds even more destruction and suffering,” he said.

Grossman’s works, which have been translated into dozens of languages, have won many international prizes.

He also won Israel’s top literary prize in 2018, the Israel Prize for Literature, for his work spanning more than three decades.

He said it was “devastating” to “put the words ‘Israel’ and ‘famine’ together” because of the Holocaust and our “supposed sensitivity to the suffering of humanity.”

The celebrated author has long been a critic of the Israeli government.