During the latest operation, Israeli soldiers armed with submachine guns stormed Al Jazeera’s office in Ramallah, the administrative center of the Palestinian Authority in the occupied West Bank, and handed a closure notice to bureau chief Walid al Omari. The soldiers asked all the people working during the night shift to go out and leave behind only personal items.
The Israeli military authorities gave the closure order while the bureau is located in Area A, which should be under Palestinian civil and security control according to the Oslo agreement. This is not surprising either because Israel has, on different occasions, raided area A, thus causing many Palestinian losses.
The raid, which also involved violence against Al Jazeera journalists, was not the first aggression against the Channel in Israel. The previous attack also saw physically violent acts perpetrated on media personnel, with some journalists being killed. The American University in Beirut’s distinguished fellow Rami Khouri accused Israel of working to muzzle stories of their operation against Palestinians.
Israeli authorities explained the outage by internal activities and alleged promotion of incitement and terrorism. The media is essential in passing information to the outside world about Israel’s performance in the Palestinian territories.
As the raid took place, the Al Jazeera team was informed that they could go with their cameras, leaving them behind after that. Jivara Budeiri, a journalist who was on the scene at the time of the incident, was worried that engineers amongst the soldiers wanted to burn the bureau archives. Soldiers entered for hours, it is said, to rip down a banner honoring the late Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh.
No loss of lives was reported among the team; they remained outside, exposed to the Israeli-equipped weaponry. Indeed, large metal plates cover the bureau entry point, and it continues to be inaccessible to staff to date.
