Palestinian, Israeli journalists awarded Prize for Courage in France

By Burak Bir

LONDON (AA) - A Palestinian journalist and an Israeli reporter received an award for their focus on Israel’s settlement practice in the occupied West Bank, the French Foreign Ministry said Tuesday.

The ministry announced that the second Anna Politkovskaya-Arman Soldin Prize for Courage in Journalism was awarded to Palestinian Basel Adra and Yuval Abraham from Israel.

The prize, launched by France last year, pays tribute to Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who paid with her life for investigations into the Chechen War, and the Franco-Bosnian reporter Arman Soldin, whose worked focused on the Russian war on Ukraine.

"France continues to denounce the dangerous conditions in which so many journalists exercise their profession, as well as the arbitrary arrests of which they are sometimes victims," the ministry said in a statement.

Voicing support for the protection of journalists which is "essential to guarantee access to free, independent, pluralist and reliable information," the statement noted that France reaffirms its unfailing commitment to media freedom and the unhindered exercise of journalism throughout the world.

Adra and Abraham are among four who directed the 2024 documentary, “No Other Land,” about forced home demolitions in Palestine.

In recent years, the Israeli military has conducted regular raids in the West Bank, which have escalated with the start of the war against the Gaza Strip on Oct. 7, 2023. Palestinians have also been violently attacked by illegal Israeli settlers.

At least 772 Palestinians have since been killed and more than 6,300 others injured by Israeli army fire in the occupied territory, according to the Health Ministry.

The escalation follows a landmark opinion in July by the International Court of Justice that declared Israel's decades-long occupation of Palestinian land "illegal" and demanded the evacuation of all existing settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.