Israel forces raid Al Jazeera office in West Bank, order 45-day closure

Qatari broadcaster Al Jazeera said that Israeli forces raided its office in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank on Sunday and issued a 45-day closure order.

Israel’s government last week announced it was revoking the press credentials
of Al Jazeera journalists in the country, four months after banning the
channel from operating inside Israel.

“There is a court ruling for closing down Al Jazeera for 45 days,” an Israeli
soldier told Al Jazeera’s West Bank bureau chief Walid al-Omari, the network
reported, citing the conversation which was broadcast live.

“I ask you to take all the cameras and leave the office at this moment,” the
soldier said, according to the footage, which showed heavily armed and masked
troops entering the office.

The broadcaster said the soldiers did not provide a reason for the closure
order.

Israel’s army did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has had a long-running feud
with Al Jazeera that has worsened since the Gaza war began following the
October 7 attack by Palestinian militant group Hamas.

The Israeli military has repeatedly accused journalists from the Qatari
network of being “terrorist agents” in Gaza affiliated with Hamas or its
ally, Islamic Jihad.

Al Jazeera denies Israel’s accusations and claims that Israel systematically
targets its employees in the Gaza Strip.

The media office of the Hamas-run government in Gaza condemned Sunday’s raid,
saying in a statement it was a “resounding scandal and a blatant violation of
press freedom”.

– ‘No surprise’ –
The Israeli parliament passed a law in early April allowing the banning of
foreign media broadcasts deemed harmful to state security.

Based on this law, the Israeli government approved on May 5 the decision to
ban Al Jazeera from broadcasting from Israel and close its offices for a
renewable 45-day period, which was extended for a fourth time by a Tel Aviv
court last week.

The shutdown had not affected broadcasts from the West Bank or the Gaza
Strip, from which Al Jazeera was still covering Israel’s war with Palestinian
militants.

Al Jazeera correspondent Nida Ibrahim said the network’s West Bank office
closure “comes as no surprise” after the earlier ban on reporting from inside
Israel.

“We’ve heard Israeli officials threatening to close down the bureau,” she
said on the network.

“But we (had) not been expecting it to happen today.”

Bureau chief Omari said that “targeting journalists this way always aims to
erase the truth and prevent people from hearing the truth”.

In May, the network condemned as “criminal” the ban on it operating over its
coverage of the Gaza war.

“We condemn and denounce this criminal act by Israel that violates the human
right to access information,” the channel said in a statement. (BSS/AFP)