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By: Tia Goldenberg and Jon Gambrell
Israel ordered the local offices of Qatar’s Al Jazeera satellite news network to close Sunday, escalating a long-running feud between the broadcaster and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hard-line government as Doha-mediated cease-fire negotiations with Hamas hang in the balance.
The extraordinary order, which includes confiscating broadcast equipment, preventing the broadcast of the channel’s reports and blocking its websites, is believed to be the first time Israel has ever shuttered a foreign news outlet operating in the country.
Al Jazeera went off Israel’s main cable and satellite providers in the hours after the order. However, its website and multiple online streaming links still operated Sunday.
The network has reported the Israeli-Hamas war nonstop since the militants’ initial cross-border attack Oct. 7 and has maintained 24-hour coverage in the Gaza Strip amid Israel’s grinding ground offensive that has killed and wounded members of its staff. While including on-the-ground reporting of the war’s casualties, its Arabic arm often publishes verbatim video statements from Hamas and other regional militant groups.
“Al Jazeera reporters harmed Israel’s security and incited against soldiers,” Netanyahu said in a statement. “It’s time to remove the Hamas mouthpiece from our country.”
Al Jazeera issued a statement vowing it will “pursue all available legal channels through international legal institutions in its quest to protect both its rights and journalists, as well as the public’s right to information.”
“Israel’s ongoing suppression of the free press, seen as an effort to conceal its actions in the Gaza Strip, stands in contravention of international and humanitarian law,” the network said. “Israel’s direct targeting and killing of journalists, arrests, intimidation and threats will not deter Al Jazeera.”
The Israeli government has taken action against individual reporters over the decades since its founding in 1948, but broadly allows for a rambunctious media scene that includes foreign bureaus from around the world, even from Arab nations. It also blocked the foreign broadcasts of the Hezbollah-affiliated, Beirut-based Al Mayadeen news channel at the start of the war.
A law passed last month allows the government to take action against Al Jazeera, Netanyahu’s office said.
Israeli Communication Minister Shlomo Karhi later published footage online of authorities raiding a hotel room Al Jazeera had been broadcasting from in east Jerusalem, which the Palestinians hope to one day have for their future state. He said officials seized some of the channel’s equipment there.
“We finally are able to stop Al Jazeera’s well-oiled incitement machine that harms the security of the country,” Karhi said. His office said it would bar Al Jazeera from operating in Israel for at least 45 days, a measure that can be renewed.
The ban did not appear to affect the channel’s operations in the occupied West Bank or Gaza Strip, where Israel wields control but which are not sovereign Israeli territory.
The decision threatens to heighten tensions with Qatar at a time when the Doha government is playing a key role in mediation efforts to halt the war in Gaza, along with Egypt and the United States.
Qatar has had strained ties with Netanyahu in particular since he made comments suggesting that Qatar is not exerting enough pressure on Hamas to prompt it to relent in its terms for a truce deal. Qatar hosts Hamas leaders in exile in Doha.
The sides appear to be close to striking a deal, but multiple previous rounds of talks have ended with no agreement.
(AP)
