In an exclusive, revelatory investigation into the financial undercurrents of the war in the Middle East, Cairo-based reporter Samy Magdy delivered an unmatched ground-level look at the booming underground trade of restricted goods into the Gaza Strip. Moving beyond the daily headlines of fighting and a fragile ceasefire deal to uncover who profits from the conflict, Magdy spent months cultivating a sensitive, cross-border network of merchants, truckers, traders and Palestinian and international officials to penetrate a market steeped in secrecy.
Magdy earned the trust of skeptical insiders and, with assistance from others in the region, secured a variety of perspectives alongside granular, tangible details about specific contraband goods. He ultimately developed more than a dozen sources for the story. The resulting work provided an illuminating look at an often-unseen facet of the crisis.
Supported by the sharp framing and editing of Lee Keath and Janelle Cogan, the narrative connected complex illicit supply chains directly to the everyday reality of residents coping with skyrocketing costs and humanitarian despair. The piece showed how Israeli soldiers and other middlemen are accused of pocketing money from smuggled-goods networks and how the Hamas-led government takes its own cut. The story stood alone across international media in documenting how millions of dollars change hands and how the clandestine smuggling operates.
The judges praised the exceptional source work and tradecraft, highlighting how Magdy laid the groundwork to secure a diverse range of voices and concrete details about contraband products — from medicine and solar panels to heavily marked-up staples.
For providing a thorough, detailed look at the smuggling of restricted goods into Gaza over the course of the war, Samy Magdy earns this week’s Best of AP AP — First Winner.
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