Israel extends closure of Al Jazeera’s West Bank office

Israeli occupation authorities yesterday extended the closure of Al Jazeera’s West Bank office in Ramallah, in the central occupied West Bank, for another 45 days.

On 22 September, Israeli occupation forces raided Al Jazeera’s office and ordered its staff to shut its operations for 45 days under a military order. Soldiers confiscated all devices and documents in the office, prevented its employees from using their cars, and stopped the channel’s broadcast.

Months earlier, on 5 May, the right-wing Israeli government banned Al Jazeera, closing its offices in Israel and restricting access to its website under a law passed by the Knesset that allows the communications minister to shut down foreign networks operating in the apartheid state if the defence minister identifies that their broadcasts pose “an actual harm to the state’s security.”

Later in June, Israeli Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi extended the channel’s closure for 45 days, claiming at the time, that the ban was “unanimously adopted by the government, based on updated opinions from all security sources, which state unequivocally that the channel’s broadcasts are a real threat to the security of the state.”

Al Jazeera has denounced the Israeli occupation’s repressive measures, saying they aim to prevent the world from seeing the reality of Israel’s crimes in the occupied Palestinian territories and the war on Gaza.

Israel has since published the names and photos of six Palestinian Al Jazeera journalists in Gaza, accusing them of belonging to the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad. Journalists and activists on social media pointed out that the publication of the names and photos of the six journalists may pave the way for their assassination, as has happened with other journalists.

Read: Al Jazeera investigation exposes Israeli ‘war crimes’ in Gaza