Israel raids and closes Al Jazeera’s office in Ramallah in the West Bank

Israeli forces raided the offices of the Al Jazeera satellite news network in the Israeli-controlled West Bank early Sunday, ordering the office closed amid a widening Israeli campaign targeting the Qatar-backed broadcaster as it covers the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip. .

Al Jazeera broadcast live footage of Israeli soldiers on its Arabic-language channel ordering the office to be closed for 45 days. It follows an unusual order issued in May that saw Israeli police raid Al Jazeera’s broadcast site in East Jerusalem, seize equipment there, block its broadcasts in Israel and block its websites.

The move marked the first time that Israel has ever shut down a foreign media outlet operating in the country. However, Al Jazeera continued to operate in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, areas the Palestinians hope to have in their future state.

There was no immediate acknowledgment of the closure by the Israeli military. The Israeli military did not respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press. Al Jazeera has condemned the move as it continues to broadcast live from Amman in neighboring Jordan.

Armed Israeli soldiers entered the office and told the reporter live that it would be closed for 45 days, saying that the workers must leave immediately. The network later broadcast what appeared to be Israeli soldiers tearing down a banner from a balcony used by an Al Jazeera office. Al Jazeera said it has a photo of Shireen Abu Akleh, a Palestinian-American journalist who was shot dead by Israeli forces in May 2022.

“There is a court order to shut down Al Jazeera for 45 days,” an Israeli soldier told Al Jazeera chief Walid al-Omari in live footage. “Please take all the cameras out of the office right now.”

Al-Omari later said that the Israeli army began confiscating documents and equipment from the office, as the explosion of tear gas and gunfire could be seen and heard in the area.

The Palestinians gained limited autonomy in Gaza and parts of the occupied West Bank through the 1993 Oslo accords. While Israel occupies and controls large areas of the West Bank, Ramallah is under full Palestinian political and security control, making the Israeli attack on the Al Jazeera office all the more surprising.

The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate condemned the attack and the organization of Israel.

“This military decision, which was without reason, is a new violence against the work of journalists and media,” it said.

The Palestinian Authority controls parts of the West Bank. Its forces were expelled from Gaza when Hamas took power in 2007, and it has no power there.

The network reported on the Israeli-Hamas war that has not stopped since the army’s first attack on the border in Oct. 7 and maintained 24-hour coverage of the Gaza Strip amid Israeli attacks that killed and wounded members of its staff. It is not clear whether the Israeli military will target Al Jazeera’s work in Gaza.

Although it also includes ground-level reporting on war casualties, Al Jazeera’s Arabic arm often publishes video statements with audio translations from Hamas and other regional groups.

That led Israeli officials to tell Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the network was “damaging Israel’s security and inciting the military.” Those allegations have been strongly disputed by Al Jazeera, whose main sponsor, Qatar, has been key in negotiations between Israel and Hamas to reach an agreement to end the war.

The order to close Al Jazeera in Israel has been renewed several times since then, but it has not yet said that the offices in Ramallah have been closed.

The war began when Hamas-led fighters killed around 1,200 people, most of them civilians, in an attack on Oct. 7 in southern Israel. They kidnapped another 250 people and they are still holding about 100 hostages. Israel’s 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 office also comes as tensions continue to escalate over the war in Lebanon, where electronic devices exploded last week in an Israeli sabotage campaign targeting the Shiite militia Hezbollah.

The blasts on Tuesday and Wednesday killed at least 37 people – including two children – and injured around 3,000 others.