Israel-Hamas war: Israel orders Al Jazeera to shut down local operation, seizes equipment

TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) 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 as Doha-brokered ceasefire negotiations with Hamas stalled. balance.

The extraordinary order, which includes seizing broadcasting equipment, preventing the channel from broadcasting reports and blocking its website, is believed to be the first time Israel has ever shut down a foreign news outlet operating in the country.

Al Jazeera was pulled from major Israeli cable and satellite providers in the hours following the order. However, its website and multiple webcast links were still working on Sunday.

The network has reported on the Israeli-Hamas war since the militants launched a cross-border attack on Oct. 7 and has maintained 24-hour coverage in the Gaza Strip amid an Israeli ground offensive that has killed and wounded members of its staff. While it includes on-the-ground reporting of war casualties, its Arab wing often publishes verbatim video statements from Hamas and other regional militant groups.

Al Jazeera journalists harmed Israel's security and incited against soldiers, Netanyahu said in a statement. It is time to remove the Hamas spokesman from our country.

Al Jazeera issued a statement pledging to pursue all legal channels available through international legal institutions in its effort to protect the rights of itself and journalists, as well as the public's right to information.

Israel's continued suppression of the free press, seen as an attempt to hide its actions in the Gaza Strip, is contrary to 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 cracked down on individual journalists in the decades since its founding in 1948, but it largely allows a rampant media scene that includes foreign bureaus from around the world, even from Arab countries. It also blocked foreign broadcasts of the Hezbollah-linked Al Mayadeen news channel based in Beirut 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 Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi later released online footage of authorities raiding a hotel room that Al Jazeera had broadcast from east Jerusalem, which Palestinians hope to one day own for their future state. He said officials confiscated some of the canal equipment there.

We are finally able to stop Al Jazeera's well-oiled propaganda machine that is undermining the country's security, Karhi said. His office said it would ban Al Jazeera from operating in Israel for at least 45 days, a measure that could be renewed.

The ban does not appear to have affected the canals' operations in the occupied West Bank or the Gaza Strip, where Israel has control but which are not sovereign Israeli territory.

The decision threatens to heighten tensions with Qatar at a time when Doha's government is playing a key role in mediating efforts to halt war in Gazaalong with Egypt and the United States.

Qatar has had strained relations with Netanyahu in particular since he made comments suggesting that Qatar is not putting enough pressure on Hamas to get it to give up its terms for a cease-fire deal. Qatar hosts exiled Hamas leaders in Doha.

The parties appear to be close to reaching an agreement, but multiple previous rounds of talks have ended without agreement.

In a statement on Sunday, Hamas condemned the Israeli government's order, calling on international organizations to take action against Israel.

The Foreign Press Association in Israel criticized the order.

With this decision, Israel joins a dubious club of authoritarian governments to ban the station, he said. This is a black day for the media. The New York-based Committee for Project Journalists similarly warned that the move represented an extremely alarming precedent for restricting international media working in Israel.

Omar Shakir, Human Rights Watch's director for Israel and Palestine, criticized the Israeli order as an attack on press freedom.

Instead of trying to silence reports of its atrocities in Gaza, the Israeli government should stop committing them, he added.

Israel has long had a difficult relationship with Al Jazeera, accusing it of bias. Relations took a nosedive nearly two years ago when Al Jazeera's correspondent Shirin Abu Akleh was killed during an Israeli military attack in the occupied West Bank.

These relations deteriorated further after the outbreak of Israel was against Hamas on October 7, when the militant group carried out a cross-border attack in southern Israel that killed 1,200 people and took 250 hostages. Since then, the Israeli military campaign in Gaza has killed more than 34,000 people, according to local health officials there, who do not break down the numbers into civilians and combatants.

The Israeli media has largely avoided the plight of those in the Gaza Strip, focusing on the October 7 attack, the hostages held there and stories of Israeli military heroism.

Meanwhile in December, an Israeli attack killed one Al Jazeera cameraman as he reported on the war in southern Gaza. The head of the Gaza canal office, Wael Dahdouh, was wounded in the same attack. Dahdouh, a well-known correspondent for the Palestinians during many wars, later evacuated Gaza, but only after Israeli strikes killed his wife, three of his children and a grandson.

Al Jazeera is one of the few international media outlets that has remained in Gaza throughout the war, broadcasting bloody scenes of airstrikes and overcrowded hospitals and accusing Israel of massacres.

However, criticism of the channel is not new. The US government singled out the broadcaster during the US invasion of Iraq, after its 2003 invasion toppled dictator Saddam Hussein, and for airing videos of late al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden.

Al Jazeera has been shut down or blocked by other Middle Eastern governments.

Most notably in 2013, Egyptian authorities raided a luxury hotel used by Al Jazeera as a base of operations following a military takeover that followed mass protests against President Mohammed Morsi. Three Al Jazeera staff members were sentenced to 10 years in prison but were released in 2015 after widespread international criticism.

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Gambrell reported from Jerusalem. Associated Press writers Jack Jeffrey in Jerusalem and Melanie Lidman in Tel Aviv contributed.