Heavily armed and masked Israeli troopers raid Al Jazeera bureau in occupied West Bank and ship 45-day closure order.
The sounds of gunfire and teargas proceed across the Al Jazeera workplaces in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, after Israeli troopers raided and shuttered the bureau.
Heavily armed and masked Israeli troopers forcefully entered the constructing the place Al Jazeera’s bureau is and handed the 45-day closure order to the community’s West Bank bureau chief Walid al-Omari early on Sunday.
They didn't present a motive for the choice.
Speaking over the telephone from Ramallah, Al Jazeera’s Nida Ibrahim stated the West Bank raid and closure order “comes as no surprise” after the sooner ban on reporting from inside Israel.
“We’ve heard Israeli officials threatening to close down the bureau. We’ve heard the government discussing this, asking the military ruler in the occupied West Bank to close down and shut down the channel. But we [had] not been expecting it to happen today,” Ibrahim stated.
Sunday’s raid comes simply months after the Israeli authorities banned Al Jazeera from working inside Israel in May.
That preliminary closure order was additionally for 45 days, but it surely has been renewed and Al Jazeera journalists are nonetheless unable to report from contained in the nation.
After the raid, al-Omari – the bureau chief – raised issues about what Israeli troopers could do to the office.
“Targeting journalists this way always aims to erase the truth and prevent people from hearing the truth,” he stated.
The Government Media Office in Gaza known as the Israeli transfer a “deafening scandal”.
“We call on all media organisations and groups that deal with human rights in the world to condemn this heinous crime … that is a blatant violation of press and media freedom,” it stated.
Killing and silencing journalists
Media rights teams have slammed the Israeli authorities for its restrictions and assaults on journalists, significantly Palestinian reporters on the bottom in Gaza amid Israel’s ongoing warfare on the besieged enclave.
Since the beginning of the warfare in October of final 12 months, Israeli forces have killed 173 journalists, in keeping with a tally from the Government Media Office.
Al Jazeera’s Ismail al-Ghoul and Samer Abudaqa are among the many journalists killed.
Al Jazeera Arabic correspondent Ismail Abu Omar was additionally severely injured in an Israeli strike in February.
Attacks in opposition to Al Jazeera reporters predate the warfare in Gaza, nonetheless.
In 2022, Israeli forces killed veteran Al Jazeera correspondent Shireen Abu Akleh whereas she was reporting from Jenin in the occupied West Bank.
A 12 months earlier, the Israeli army additionally bombed a tower housing the community’s workplaces in Gaza.
Al Jazeera condemned the ban on reporting inside Israel earlier this 12 months, calling it a “criminal act that violates human rights and the basic right to access of 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 community stated in a press release in May.
“Israel’s direct targeting and killing of journalists, arrests, intimidation and threats will not deter Al Jazeera from its commitment to cover.”
Sunday’s raid highlights Israel’s tight management over the occupied West Bank, together with areas presupposed to be beneath Palestinian Authority jurisdiction akin to Ramallah.
It comes two days after the United Nations General Assembly voted overwhelmingly for an finish to the Israeli occupation.
Rami Khouri, a fellow on the American University of Beirut, additionally stated the raid is a component of a longstanding Israeli coverage of searching for to “prevent real news about Palestinians or about what the State of Israel is doing to Palestinians” from popping out.
But Khouri advised Al Jazeera that the bureau’s closure received’t “stop the world from knowing what’s going on, because of the hundreds of brave Palestinian journalists” and different overseas journalists in the West Bank and in Israel.
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