DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Israeli troops raided the offices of the satellite news channel Al Jazeera in the Israeli-occupied West Bank early Sunday, ordering the office shut down as part of a widening campaign by Israel targeting the Qatari-funded channel as it covers the war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Al Jazeera broadcast live footage on its Arabic-language channel of Israeli troops ordering the office to close for 45 days. The measure follows an extraordinary order issued in May that saw Israeli police raid Al Jazeera broadcast site in East Jerusalemseizing equipment on site, preventing its broadcasts in Israel and blocking its websites.
This is the first time that Israel has shut down a foreign media outlet operating in the country. Al Jazeera, however, continues to operate in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, territories that the Palestinians hope to see incorporated into their future state.
The Israeli military did not respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press. Al Jazeera denounced the move while continuing to broadcast live from Amman in neighboring Jordan.
Armed Israeli soldiers entered the office and told a reporter live on air that the office would be closed, and that staff should leave immediately. The channel then broadcast what appeared to be Israeli soldiers tearing down a banner on a balcony used by Al Jazeera’s office. Al Jazeera said it carried an image of Shireen Abu Akleha Palestinian-American journalist shot dead by Israeli forces in May 2022.
“A court has decided to close Al Jazeera for 45 days,” an Israeli soldier told Al Jazeera’s local bureau chief, Walid al-Omari, in a live video. “I ask you to take all the cameras and leave the office immediately.”
Al-Omari later said that Israeli troops began confiscating documents and equipment from the office, as tear gas and gunfire could be seen and heard in the area.
Palestinians were granted limited autonomy in Gaza and parts of the occupied West Bank under the 1993 Oslo Accords. While Israel occupies and controls large areas of the West Bank, Ramallah is under complete Palestinian political and security control, making the Israeli raid on Al Jazeera’s office all the more surprising.
The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate denounced the raid and the Israeli order.
“This arbitrary military decision constitutes a new aggression against journalistic work and the media,” he said.
The Palestinian Authority administers part of the West Bank. Its forces were driven out of Gaza when Hamas took power in 2007, and it no longer has any power there.
Israeli Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi later described the raid as hitting “the mouthpiece of Hamas and Hezbollah,” the Shiite militia in Lebanon that Israel was targeted by strikes on Sunday after militants fired cross-border shots.
“We will continue to fight the enemy channels and ensure the safety of our heroic fighters,” Karhi wrote on the social platform X. He did not specify which authority Israel had cited to order the office’s closure.
The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said it was “deeply concerned” by the Israeli raid.
“Journalists must be protected and allowed to work freely,” he said.
The channel has been covering the war between Israel and Hamas nonstop since the militants’ first cross-border attack on October 7, and has provided round-the-clock coverage in the Gaza Strip amid Israel’s ground offensive that has killed and wounded its staff. It is not yet clear whether the Israeli military will also target Al Jazeera’s operation in Gaza.
While including on-the-ground reporting on war casualties, Al Jazeera’s Arabic branch often publishes text-based video statements from Hamas and other regional militant groups.
This led Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to claim that the network had “undermined Israel’s security and incited violence against soldiers.” These allegations were vehemently denied by Al Jazeera, whose main backer, Qatar, played a key role in negotiations between Israel and Hamas to reach a ceasefire and end the war.
The order to close Al Jazeera in Israel has been renewed several times since then, but so far it has not ordered the closure of the Ramallah bureaus.
Since its inception in 1948, the Israeli government has taken measures against journalists in the decades since, but has generally allowed a turbulent media landscape that includes foreign bureaus around the world, including Arab countries. It also blocked foreign broadcasts by the Hezbollah-affiliated Al Mayadeen news channel based in Beirut early in the war.
Criticism of Al Jazeera is not new. The US government targeted the channel during the US occupation of Iraq after the 2003 overthrow of dictator Saddam Hussein and for broadcasting videos of former al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
Al Jazeera has been shut down or blocked by other Middle Eastern governments.
In 2013, Egyptian authorities raided a luxury hotel used by Al Jazeera as an operational base after the military took control of the channel following mass protests against President Mohammed Morsi. Three Al Jazeera staff members were sentenced to ten years in prison, but were released in 2015 following widespread international criticism.
The war between Israel and Hamas began when Hamas fighters killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, in an attack on southern Israel on October 7. They kidnapped another 250 people and continue to hold about 100 hostages. The Israeli campaign in Gaza has killed at least 41,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between fighters and civilians.
The closure of Al Jazeera’s Ramallah bureau also comes as tensions continue to rise over a possible spread of the war to Lebanon, where electronic devices exploded last week in a suspected terrorist attack. Israeli sabotage campaign targeting Shiite militia Hezbollah.
The explosions on Tuesday and Wednesday killed at least 37 people – including two children – and injured about 3,000 others.
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Associated Press writer Natalie Melzer in Nahariya, Israel, contributed to this report.
