When French journalist Alice Froussard landed at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport a week ago, she arrived with a valid travel authorization and plans to report from the occupied West Bank, where she had worked for years. By the next morning, Israeli authorities placed her on a flight back to Paris,
denying
her entry.
She is among at least six foreign members of the press the Committee to Protect Journalists has documented being barred from entering Israel and the Palestinian territory over the past year, raising concerns about the
growing clampdown
on journalists whose reporting is critical of the Israeli government.
For two-thirds of the journalists, officials directly cited their reporting or public statements as grounds for the decisions, including their use of terms such as “apartheid” or “genocide” to describe Israeli policies, according to documents seen by CPJ and
news reports
. The others said they were given little or no explanation but suspect their reporting played a role.
This comes as Israel continues to
block
foreign journalists from entering Gaza, except on highly controlled embeds with the Israeli military, leaving Palestinian reporters inside the territory to bear the burden of on-the-ground reporting on the war.
On October 5, 2025, CPJ filed an
amicus brief
in support of the Foreign Press Association (FPA) to Israel’s Supreme Court for unrestricted journalist access to Gaza. Following months of delay on behalf of the court, CPJ, alongside FPA, the Union of Journalists in Israel (UJI), and Reporters Without Borders (RSF), filed an
emergency motion
on April 13, 2026, asking the Israeli justices to expedite their decision. On June 3, 2026, the state informed the court that it would maintain its ban on unaccompanied entry for foreign and local journalists, citing ongoing security concerns.
“Not only does Israel continue to prevent foreign journalists from independently entering Gaza, it is now openly denying them entry to Israel and
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