Mohammed Qraiqea
Mohammed Qraiqea was a Palestinian journalist from the Shuja'iyya neighborhood, east of Gaza city. He worked as a journalist for different local Palestinian media outlets before joining Al Jazeera Media Network as a correspondent in August 2024. While working for Al Jazeera covering the news from Gaza during the genocide perpetrated by the Israeli authorities, the human rights defender was responsible for documenting and disseminating evidence of human rights violations commited against the gazan population.
Amid the bombing and harsh humanitarian conditions he completed his studies and enrolled in a master's program in journalism at the Islamic University of Gaza.
On 10 August 2025, Mohammed Qraiqea was killed along with five other journalists in an Israeli airstrike that targeted their tent near Al-Shifa hospital. In March 2024, the human rights defender’s mother was executed in front of Al-Shifa hospital, where she had been staying when Israeli forces stormed the hospital, just a few meters away from where Mohammed Qraiqea was killed.
His last appearance on Al Jazeera was just one hour before his killing when he provided live coverage of the latest developments and humanitarian updates in Gaza City.
Human rights defenders in the OPT are subjected to acts of harassment, restrictions on freedom of movement, stigmatisation, abductions, long periods of arbitrary detention usually under administrative detention orders, illegal searches of their homes and offices and killings. Many of the violations are state-sanctioned, or if not sanctioned at the highest levels of the Israeli political and military establishment, then condoned by the ongoing policy of impunity which permeates the military and judicial system in relation to the OPT. In some instances Israeli settlers have also been the perpetrators of violence against human rights defenders.
