This Sunday, September 22, 2024, the Israeli army raided the offices of the Qatari channel Al Jazeera and ordered a 45-day closure. It accuses it of “inciting terror.” The media denounces an “affront to freedom of the press.”
The Israeli military said on Sunday that the office of Qatari television channel Al Jazeera in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah, which Israel has ordered closed for 45 days, was “used to incite terror.”
Mandatory closure for 45 days
The closure order was signed following legal advice and an intelligence assessment that “the offices were used to incite terror, to support terrorist activities, and the channel’s broadcasts endangered security and public order in the region and in the entire State of Israel,” the army said in a statement.
“An affront to freedom of the press”
Qatari television channel Al Jazeera described Sunday as “criminal” the raid by Israeli forces on its offices in Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank, and the issuance of a 45-day closure order.
Al Jazeera “vehemently condemns and denounces this criminal act”, the channel said in a statement, adding that this “raid” on his desk and “the seizure” of his equipment were not “not just an attack” against her “but an affront to freedom of the press and the very principles of journalism.”