When the reports that the terrorist organization Hamas had entered Israel came, on October 7, 2023, Samir Abu Eid stood on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem and reported on SVT’s live broadcast.
– After that first live broadcast, I went around Jerusalem and the streets were deserted, people were nervous, terrified. Everything changed in just an instant, he says.
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Samir Abu Eid and photographer Pablo Torres were among the first group of journalists allowed in at the music festival where several hundred people were shot dead and several taken hostage.
– It was felt that the place will have great importance in Israeli history. I was back there the other week and saw that people come to this place and mourn, says Samir Abu Eid.
Not allowed into Gaza
The war in Gaza is the fifth since Samir Abu Eid began reporting on the Middle East.
– But what is happening now, the death and suffering, is so much worse than before, he says.
No international journalists are allowed into Gaza, and the information from inside comes, among other things, from local Palestinian journalists. Samir Abu Eid is in contact with both journalists and ordinary families inside Gaza.
– But I want to be an eyewitness. We get a lot of information, but it is only a fraction of what we could find out if I and other journalists had been there, he says.
In the video, Samir Abu Eid looks back on the six months of war between Israel and Hamas through his own elements.