Like me, all the journalists knew what would happen on Saturday morning. If something happened in Erez or elsewhere I could quickly move there. Many people have asked why I went to Saladin Road. At that time there were three very sensitive points in Gaza – one at Erez, one north of Gaza City, and the third in the middle, on Saladin Road.įrance 2 TV footage shows Muhammad al-Durrah after he was fatally struck in the abdomen his seriously wounded father, Jamal, shook with convulsions and lost consciousness, and was later hospitalised in Gaza We were watching the situation and I knew, as a journalist, that on Saturday morning there would be a demonstration in Gaza. I knew why it was quiet – because the schools were closed and it was the holy day. The West Bank was on fire, but Gaza was really quiet. I said: “Gaza, it’s quiet, nothing in Gaza.” “OK,” he replied, “well keep your eyes on it, if anything happens, just let me know and go and film.”Īt 3pm, 4pm, there was nothing happening. Charles called me when I arrived and asked about the situation in Gaza. Charles Enderlin, the France 2 bureau chief in Jerusalem, called me at 10am and said “I am sending you the car, you have to go back quickly to Gaza because the situation in the West Bank is getting very, very bad.” The day before, I was in Jerusalem working at the France 2 office. Two decades later, in an exclusive interview with Al Jazeera in 2020, he recalled the events of that day: He has been banned from returning to Gaza since 2017. He works between there and Amman, Jordan. It took until 2013 for a French court to vindicate France 2 and Abu Rahma, ultimately upholding their defamation case against Philippe Karsenty, a French media commentator who had accused them of staging the video, and fining him 7,000 euros.Ību Rahma, who has won numerous awards for his work, including the Rory Peck Award in 2001, is now based in Greece, where he, his wife and eight-year-old son are residents. The Israeli government tried to challenge the veracity of the video, with the Israeli military denying that its soldiers had been responsible. It became one of the most powerful images of the Second Intifada. The video of Jamal al-Durrah trying to shield his son as bullets rained down on them was aired by France 2, the news channel Abu Rahma was working for. The boy, Muhammad al-Durrah, was mortally wounded and died soon after. On September 30, 2000, a Palestinian cameraman from Gaza, Talal Abu Rahma, shot a video of a father and his 12-year-old son under fire on the Saladin Road, south of Gaza City.
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