Al Jazeera went off-air in Israel on Sunday, hours after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that his government has decided to shut down the Qatar-based news channel. The government “unanimously decided: the incitement channel Al Jazeera will be closed in Israel,” Netanyahu said on X. There was no immediate comment from the channel headquarters in Doha, Qatar.
The head of Al Jazeera in Israel and the Palestinian territories described the government’s decision to shutter the Qatari-owned station’s local operations as “dangerous” and motivated by politics rather than professional considerations. Al Jazeera’s legal team is preparing a response, Walid Omary told news agency Reuters, in possible anticipation of a court appeal against the decision.
הממשלה בראשותי החליטה פה אחד: ערוץ ההסתה אל ג׳זירה ייסגר בישראל.תודה לשר @shlomo_karhi
— Benjamin Netanyahu – בנימין נתניהו (@netanyahu) May 5, 2024
Israeli media said the vote allows Israel to block the channel from operating in the country for 45 days, according to the decision. “My government decided unanimously: the incitement channel Al Jazeera will close in Israel,” Netanyahu posted on X. Al Jazeera as vehemently denied that it incites against Israel.
The decision escalated Israel’s long-running feud against Al Jazeera. It also threatened to heighten tensions with Qatar, which owns the channel, at a time when the Doha government is playing a key role in mediation efforts to halt the war in Gaza. Israel has long had rocky ties with Al Jazeera, accusing it of bias against it.
Al Jazeera is one of the few international media outlets to remain in Gaza throughout the war, broadcasting bloody scenes of airstrikes and overcrowded hospitals and accusing Israel of massacres. Israel accuses Al Jazeera of collaborating with Hamas. Al Jazeera, the Doha-based broadcaster funded by Qatar’s government.
While Al Jazeera’s English operation often resembles the programming found on other major broadcast networks, its Arabic arm often publishes verbatim video statements from Hamas and other militant groups in the region. Since the start of the war in Gaza on October 7, Al Jazeera aired continuous on-the-ground reporting of Israel’s campaign and its consequences. Its broadcasts have been among the most watched in the Middle East amid widespread disenchantment with Western media coverage.
Last month, Netanyahu called Al Jazeera a “terrorist channel”, saying he would “act immediately” to halt its activities after a new law was passed. At the time, the news station called the proposed ban a “part of a series of systematic Israeli attacks to silence Al Jazeera”, which it said included the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh, one of its most prominent journalists in the region, while covering an Israeli raid in the occupied West Bank in May 2022.
Since the start of the Gaza war, Al Jazeera’s office in the Palestinian territory has been bombed and two of its correspondents killed. In January, Israel said an Al Jazeera staff journalist and a freelancer killed in an air strike in Gaza were “terror operatives”. The following month, it accused another journalist with the channel who was wounded in a separate strike of being a “deputy company commander” with Hamas. Al Jazeera has fiercely denied Israel’s allegations and accused it of systematically targeting Al Jazeera employees in the Gaza Strip.
Its bureau chief in Gaza, Wael al-Dahdouh, was wounded in an Israeli strike in December that killed the network’s cameraman. His wife, two of their children and a grandson were killed in the October bombardment of central Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp. His eldest son was the Al Jazeera staff journalist killed in January when a strike targeted a car in Rafah.
(With agency inputs)
