2021 Notebook: The War in Gaza and the Razing of AP's Office

FILE - Palestinians run away from tear gas during clashes with Israeli security forces at the Al Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem's Old City Monday, May 10, 2021. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean, File)
FILE - Palestinians run away from tear gas during clashes with Israeli security forces at the Al Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem's Old City Monday, May 10, 2021. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean, File)
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2021 Notebook: The War in Gaza and the Razing of AP's Office

FILE - Palestinians run away from tear gas during clashes with Israeli security forces at the Al Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem's Old City Monday, May 10, 2021. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean, File)
FILE - Palestinians run away from tear gas during clashes with Israeli security forces at the Al Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem's Old City Monday, May 10, 2021. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean, File)

An 11-day war between Israel and Gaza’s ruling Hamas militant group in May left over 260 Palestinians and 13 Israelis dead.

It was the fourth war between the bitter enemies since Hamas seized control of Gaza in 2007, with fighting erupting after weeks of tensions and clashes between Palestinian demonstrators and Israeli police in contested east Jerusalem.

Israeli aircraft struck hundreds of targets in Gaza, while Hamas launched over 4,000 rockets at Israel. In a first, the violence also spilled over into clashes between Jews and Arabs inside Israel as well.

In Gaza, tens of thousands of homes were damaged and more than 2,000 others were destroyed. Israel has eased its blockade of Gaza as part of Egyptian-led efforts to broker a longer-term cease-fire, but reconstruction efforts have yet to get off the ground. In rocket-scarred southern Israel, residents remain jittery.

On the sixth day of the war, the Israeli air force bombed the 12-story al-Jalaa tower, roughly an hour after ordering all occupants to evacuate. No one was injured, but the building was destroyed. The building was home to offices belonging to The Associated Press, the Al-Jazeera satellite channel as well as dozens of families. Israel has said it had evidence Hamas was using the building for military purposes, though it has not released any evidence publicly to back the claim.

Here, some AP journalists involved in the coverage reflect on the story and their own experiences.

FARES AKRAM, correspondent, Gaza City, Gaza Strip:
The destruction of the AP office felt like an attack on all of us. The office had been our professional home for years — and most of us had been sleeping there throughout the war, wrongly thinking that it was a rare safe place in Gaza.

Just days earlier, my family farmhouse was also destroyed by a bomb from an Israeli fighter jet. The house, located near the Israeli frontier in northern Gaza, had provided a precious escape from Gaza’s concrete jungle of homes and dirty streets.

After the war, I left Gaza through Egypt and went to visit my wife and children who have been living in Canada. I had not seen them for nearly two years due to coronavirus lockdowns. The four-month visit was the longest time I've ever stayed outside the tiny, impoverished crowded land on the Mediterranean that I call home.
Six months later, I wish I could say that things are getting better. But nothing has improved.

Large-scale reconstruction has yet to start. The nearly 15-year blockade that Israel and Egypt maintain on Gaza is still in place. Efforts to reach a deep, long-term cease-fire are stalled, and fears of another war breaking out are widespread. The process of rebuilding our office is moving slowly.
The crater made by the bomb on our farmhouse is still there, and the house is still in ruins.

It was my favorite spot in Gaza, something to look forward to on the weekends. It was where I could spend cold winter nights warmed by a burning bonfire or where my family would bake pastries and other dishes on the wood-fired clay oven. I self-isolated there during the lockdown because of the feeling of freedom walking in the field or feeding the chickens.

All of these lovely things have become a memory.

JOSEF FEDERMAN, bureau chief, Jerusalem:
The airstrike happened on the sixth day of the war. During those first few days, we had worked out a nice little routine. Karin Laub, the Mideast news director, would keep an eye on the story in the mornings while I would rest and do TV interviews. Then I would come in and handle the story and write the night's big roundup at the end of the day.

The airstrike happened on a Saturday, and it was actually kind of quiet. I went out and did a TV interview for Chinese television. Whenever I did TV, I would turn my phone off and put it down so I could focus on the interview. So, I turned my phone off for about 10 minutes.

When I turned it back on, there were eight missed calls from the office. I thought, “What the heck is going on?” And then as I was staring at my phone, it rang again and it was Karin and she was frantic. We had just received a warning from the Israeli army that the building with our Gaza office was going to be blown up. “We've been given an hour to clear out," she said, before asking me to call my contacts to see if we could stop it.

A couple of days earlier, I had given the Israeli military the GPS coordinates of our office to make sure it wasn’t accidentally bombed. So I called them to see if they could stop this. The spokesman was very nice, asked for more details about the building and said he would make some phone calls to see if anything could be done.

I then called the Foreign Ministry, telling the spokesman that this would be a public relations disaster if Israel destroyed the AP office. He also promised to make some calls and see if he could help.

Then, I called the prime minister's office and got a very different reply. There were no offers of help. The spokesman merely said: “Make sure you get your people out of there and they are safe.”

That's when I knew the office was going to get blown up.

I rushed home, flipped on the TV and watched our office get blown up in real time on live TV.

This wasn’t the worst thing we’ve dealt with. In 2014, two people were killed in an accident, an explosion in Gaza, and another staffer was badly wounded. So, all things considered, this wasn’t the worst outcome. At least everybody was safe.

They had an hour to get out of there. They grabbed what they could. And the amazing thing is, they went to work. They ran down the stairs, they got out of the building and they took incredible footage: They interviewed people, they spoke to the owner of the building who was also pleading with the army not to do this, they got incredible photos. We wrote some great stories and a first-person account. The resilience is amazing.

It’s not easy, but everybody kind of knows what to do. They spring to life, everybody knows their job, and they just go to work and take care of business.



Trust in Zelenskyy Is Diminished Even After Reversal of Law That Fueled Anti-Corruption Protests 

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy attends a press conference during his visit to Vienna, Austria, June 16, 2025. (AP)
Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy attends a press conference during his visit to Vienna, Austria, June 16, 2025. (AP)
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Trust in Zelenskyy Is Diminished Even After Reversal of Law That Fueled Anti-Corruption Protests 

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy attends a press conference during his visit to Vienna, Austria, June 16, 2025. (AP)
Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy attends a press conference during his visit to Vienna, Austria, June 16, 2025. (AP)

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy quickly reversed course last month on a law that would have curbed the independence of the country’s anti-corruption watchdogs after widespread protests that threatened the stability of his leadership for the first time since Russia’s invasion.

It's unlikely that the damage to the president’s image can be changed as easily.

Zelenskyy's reversal followed years of public discontent that simmered around his inner circle, some of whom have been accused of corruption. But Ukrainians have been largely deferential toward their president in wartime, trusting him to lead the fight against the Kremlin and even acquiescing in the suspension of some civil liberties.

The protests showed the limits of that goodwill after the public concluded that Zelenskyy’s fast-tracking of the law was a step too far.

"People will support Zelenskyy in whatever he does as it relates to the war. But the previous level of trust "that he will carry out everything correctly, without outside interests, has been damaged," said Tetiana Shevchuk, a board member of the Ukrainian nonprofit Anti-Corruption Action Center, which fights graft. Zelenskyy "will need to work hard to get it back."

A Gallup poll released Thursday found that about two-thirds of Ukrainians approve of the way Zelenskyy is handling his job as president, down from 84% in 2022. Another poll released Wednesday by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology found a similar pattern, with trust in Zelenskyy down from just before the war started and a sharp decrease since after the signing of the law.

Both polls were conducted in July and excluded adults living in regions of the country that were not controlled by Ukraine or were under entrenched Russian control.

The initial decision to sign the proposal hurt Zelenskyy's standing among Ukrainians, loyal lawmakers and Western allies, including one foreign minister who told The Associated Press that his willingness to backtrack on the law would help restore "lost trust."

Zelenskyy says bill was designed to root out Russian influence

Zelenskyy sparked the outcry when he signed measures to reduce the powers of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau, or NABU, and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office, or SAPO.

Zelenskyy said the initial bill was meant to root out Russian influence in those agencies, but he did not provide evidence to support the claim. The bill became a law so quickly that lawmakers said they barely had time to read it. For the Ukrainian people, patience wore thin.

From the outset of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, the public tolerated restrictions such as martial law and postponed elections. But critics also argued that the consolidation of the president’s authority undermined the country’s democratic institutions, along with the checks and balances necessary for transparency. Members of Zelenskyy’s inner circle and the corruption allegations fueled public resentment.

The resulting anti-corruption protests in July in Kyiv and other cities were among the largest in years, drawing thousands of demonstrators and reflecting widespread public demand for transparency and accountability even during wartime.

"It’s not one law that brought people to the streets, but a series of events and mostly an accumulation of feelings and wanting to show the government there are certain red lines," Shevchuk said.

Ukrainian leaders have been sensitive to public opinion ever since the Euromaidan protests of 2013 and 2014, which ignited extraordinary political changes, including the ousting of pro-Russia President Viktor Yanukovych. Those protests marked a decisive moment in Ukraine’s history and galvanized public intolerance toward corruption and abuse of power.

Until recently, Zelenskyy’s decisions and public statements aligned mostly with public opinion. He watches polls closely. For instance, he did not say that Ukraine would be unable to win back occupied territory militarily until polls showed that Ukrainians were willing to end the war for territorial concessions.

Many of the suspicions about Zelenskyy’s inner circle focused on the head of his presidential office, Andriy Yermak, who is seen as having too much power, according to activists and Ukrainian and Western officials. In recent weeks, two other individuals close to Zelenskyy sparked public ire ahead of the protests.

The first was former Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Oleksii Chernyshov, a close ally of Zelenskyy’s, who in June was formally named a suspect in a high-profile land-grab case. Later, the NABU announced that he was the sixth suspect in a large corruption scheme led by a Kyiv property developer.

The other individual is Tymur Mindich, a close friend of Zelenskyy’s. Ukrainian news outlet Ukrainska Pravda reported that the NABU and the SAPO were in the process of issuing a formal notice of suspicion against the businessman, who is involved in drone production.

"Ukrainians are united around the president in his war efforts, in his efforts to gain support from allies right now and the necessary military aid," Shevchuk said. "But at the same time, people know what is happening with the close allies of the president, the allegations of corruption, so this does not go unnoticed."

The protests "were a reminder to the president from the people basically saying, ‘We see everything, remember everything. And we don’t want the president to use his power to protect corruption,’" she added.

Lawmakers will no longer blindly accept laws backed by Zelenskyy

Lawmakers who speedily passed the first law limiting the NABU and the SAPO said the backlash undercut the blind trust in bills backed by Zelenskyy. Bills supported by him were once passed with little objection, with few exceptions.

"I voted not because I agreed with the law, but because it was the president’s decision," said lawmaker Oleksandr Merezhko, a member of Zelenskyy’s party. "I had no time to read it, but I understood what was at risk, and I voted like other people because we trusted the president. It was his decision, and we are team players."

Zelenskyy himself conceded that communication about the law had been lacking.

"Probably there should have been a dialogue. Communication is always necessary," he told reporters on July 24.

The firm faith in Zelenskyy led one lawmaker to joke that if the president nominated a spoon for prime minister, Parliament would likely vote in favor. But that sentiment has changed, Merezhko said, with parliament now becoming more independent.

"Now members of parliament will be more careful," he said. "If before we had a presumption of trust with respect to the president or cabinet of the bills, we now have a presumption of mistrust. If similar bills are introduced," members of parliament "will remember what happened. They don’t want to be framed or blamed for what happened."

But lawmakers commended Zelenskyy for acting swiftly to reverse his decision and quiet the anger on the street. Last week, parliament passed another bill restoring the independence of the NABU and the SAPO.

"People asked for changes. We responded," Zelenskyy told reporters.

Law also raised doubts in the West

The proposed law also drew concern among Ukraine’s European allies, who suggested it could imperil support for Kyiv and affect Ukraine's bid to join the EU. Ukraine's closest allies welcomed the swift turnaround.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer raised the issue in a July 24 call with Zelenskyy. A readout of the call from Starmer’s office said the leaders "agreed on the importance of the role of independent anti-corruption institutions at the heart of Ukraine’s democracy."

In Germany, Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul expressed dismay when Zelenskyy approved the measures to reduce the powers of the NABU and the SAPO. When Zelenskyy reversed course, Wadephul wrote on X that the Ukrainian parliament’s vote "was a positive and necessary step toward regaining lost trust."

Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump, who often weighs in on matters in foreign countries, including their domestic affairs, has been silent about the Ukrainian corruption law.