Journalist Wael al-Dahdouh, voice for Gaza, exits strip for medical treatment

Journalist Wael al-Dahdouh left Gaza via the Rafah border crossing into Egypt on Tuesday morning in order to seek medical treatment abroad.

The Al Jazeera Gaza bureau head was wounded while reporting on an Israeli airstrike in December that led to the death of his colleague, Al Jazeera cameraman Samer Abu Daqqa.

Dahdouh traveled onward to Doha from Arish International Airport, said journalists at the airport who spoke to Mada Masr.

Dahdouh, originally from the northern part of the strip, has become a voice for Palestinians within over 100 days of Israel’s aggression, continuing to report for Al Jazeera and reaching audiences worldwide to bear witness to the situation in Gaza despite Israel killing many of his family members and injuring him.

In his most recent dispatch, speaking to MSNBC, Dahdouh directly addressed United States President Joe Biden, calling on him to pay attention to the plight of people in Gaza and acknowledge their humanity.

Journalists Syndicate head Khaled al-Balshy announced Dahdouh’s arrival in Egypt on Tuesday, thanking the Egyptian administration and responsible authorities on behalf of the Journalists Syndicate for responding to its request to facilitate Dahdouh’s entry via Rafah after reports circulated that Egyptian authorities had successfully brought Dahdouh into Egypt.

Balshy told Mada Masr that some of Dahdouh’s circle requested the syndicate’s intervention to mediate with the competent authorities for him and members of his family to be allowed into Egypt via the Rafah crossing and from there to Qatar.

Dahdouh has become a household name since October, owing to his uninterrupted reporting on the ongoing Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip while going through displacement and extreme personal loss throughout a humanitarian crisis.

In October, four members of Dahdouh’s family were killed, including his wife Amna, grandchild Adam, 15-year-old son Mahmoud and seven-year-old daughter Sham in an Israeli strike in Nuseirat refugee camp. His son, Hamza al-Dahdouh, also an Al Jazeera journalist, was killed along with two other people in an Israeli airstrike that targeted their car in southern Gaza this month.

The Egyptian Journalists Syndicate awarded Dahdouh this month its 2024 press freedom award for “his resilience and the resilience of Palestinian journalists.”