Sadly, The New Humanitarian has lost a member of the global community of contributors we rely on to produce our coverage of conflicts and crises around the world: Hajar Harb, a Palestinian journalist from the Gaza Strip, passed away in London on 26 May following a battle with cancer. She was 40 years old.
I first met Hajar at a conference in Geneva, Switzerland at the end of 2023, shortly after Israel began its cataclysmic assault on Hajar’s home – the Gaza Strip. Hajar soon began pitching story ideas, and quickly became a cornerstone of the team of journalists – along with Riley Sparks and Omar Nabil Abdel Hamid – that produced some of the most important, in-depth coverage of Israel’s obstruction of aid efforts and its brutalisation of Gaza’s population that we published in 2024.
That team’s work included a deep investigation into how Israel sowed starvation and chaos in northern Gaza through a series of apparently targeted attacks that killed dozens of Palestinians who had partnered with UN agencies to secure food aid deliveries in the area. In an exclusive report, the team also revealed that the US’s ill-conceived, ineffective, and short-lived Gaza aid pier was built on top of demolished Palestinian homes.
The topics Hajar covered for The New Humanitarian were incredibly heavy. The fact that she was reporting on her own community must have made the emotional burden of the work exponentially more difficult to bear while also fuelling her sense of purpose.
Hajar was always warm, beginning her messages with a “Hello dear, how are you?”, and through her extensive contacts in Gaza, she could seemingly get almost any interview that was needed, even at short notice.
Hajar’s kindness, as well as a sense of camaraderie and shared purpose among the reporting team she worked with, were a bright spot for me amidst the dark background of the content of the articles we worked on together and the brutal reality unfolding in Gaza.
Over the course of months working together, I began to learn pieces of her own story. She started her career in 2008 reporting on the first of Israel’s wars on Gaza after Hamas came to power in the enclave in 2007. Eight years later, she published an investigative report into corruption in Gaza’s ministry of health. That report landed her in trouble. Gaza’s Hamas-led authorities summoned her for questioning, treating her “as a criminal”, she told Amnesty International.
Following a lawsuit accusing her of defamation and publishing false news, she was sentenced to six months in prison and a fine. At the time, Hajar was in Jordan receiving treatment for a previous round of cancer. She appealed the ruling, which was finally overturned in 2019. Shortly after, Hajar left Gaza and was granted asylum in the UK.
During the year we worked together, I saw Hajar in-person one other time, when we happened to both be in Cairo last May. We sat one night at the Om Kalthoum cafe in an alleyway in Khan al-Khalili listening to a band play Arabic classics. Omar, who was Hajar’s brother-in-law and who lived in Cairo at the time, was also there. The three of us talked about work and life. Hajar told me about adjusting to living in the UK, having arrived just before the COVID-19 pandemic, and her struggle to continue her career in journalism while working in a second language.
Hajar wasn’t just carrying the pressure of developing her career. She also felt responsible for her family’s wellbeing and for that of an extended network of relatives, many of whom were still in Gaza living the horrors she reported on every day. At the same time, like many Palestinian journalists reporting on Israeli atrocities, pro-Israel propaganda groups attacked her and tried to smear her reputation.
I left that evening feeling a sense of awe at the force of her spirit. She had been through so much, carried such heavy burdens, and still seemed to rise every day with a determination to bend the world to her will – and with the belief that it was still possible. I understood how she was able to get the interviews she managed for us and for other outlets: When she had a goal, she would not be denied.
But there are some things even the most formidable will cannot overcome. At the beginning of October last year, Hajar was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer. Later that month, her doctors informed her that the cancer was spreading and that the diagnosis was terminal. “Please remember me when I die,” she wrote to me in a message. “And tell the people how much I would love to help them.”
The people know, Hajar. Everyone you spoke to and who has read your articles knows how much you cared for the people of your homeland. And there are many of us around the world who had the privilege of working with you who will carry your memory and your formidable spirit forward.