Israeli Reporter Amira Hass Forced Out of Gaza by Hamas, Detained by Israeli Police For Entering Gaza Without Permit

Last month award-winning Israeli journalist Amira Hass defied the blockade and entered Gaza on a boat with international peace activists. She reported for Israel’s Ha’aretz newspaper from Gaza while being accompanied by Hamas. But on Sunday Hamas officials told Hass they could no longer guarantee her security and asked her to leave.

Hass was briefly detained by Israeli security officials upon re-entering Israel Monday because she did not have a permit for Gaza. The Israeli army officially barred its journalists from entering Gaza after the 2006 kidnapping of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.

Amira Hass is a correspondent for Israel’s Ha’aretz newspaper and author of “Drinking the Sea at Gaza: Days and Nights in a Land Under Siege,” published in 2000. She joins me now on the telephone from Ramallah in the West Bank, where she lives.

Amira Hass, correspondent for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz and one of Israel’s leading journalists. She has spent much of the last decade living in Palestinian communities of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Hamas recently told her to leave Gaza. She joins us on the phone from Ramallah.