Just months after Israel shuttered Al Jazeera’s operations “after deeming it a threat to national security,” early on Sunday morning of 22nd September, armed Israeli forces raided the Qatari broadcaster’s operations in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah during a live broadcast. They ordered its closure for 45 days and forced its staff to leave.

The Israeli forces’ raid on Al Jazeera’s West Bank led the programme director of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), Carlos Martínez de la Serna, in New York to call on the Israel authorities to stop harassing and obstructing Al Jazeera.

De la Serna said that Israel’s efforts to censor Al Jazeera severely undermine the public’s right to information on a war that has upended so many lives in the region. “Al Jazeera’s journalists must be allowed to report at this critical time, and always,” he said.

The Qatari broadcaster aired footage of the raid on Al Jazeera’s West Bank rank, during which soldiers confiscated documents and equipment from the office. Soldiers even seized the microphone from Walid al-Omari, Al Jazeera’s West Bank bureau chief, while he was live on air outside the building.

When they closed the network’s office in the occupied West Bank, Israeli soldiers were even filmed tearing down an image of murdered Al Jazeera’s Palestinian American correspondent Shireen Abu Akleh. Shireen was murdered by Israeli forces in 2022.

These attacks on Al Jazeera follow the Israeli law passed by the Knesset on 1st April, authorising the shutdown of foreign channels’ broadcasts — including Al Jazeera — if the content is deemed to be a threat to the country’s security during the ongoing war. Then, on 6th May, the Cabinet unanimously shut down Al Jazeera’s operations in Israel. Israeli inspectors from the Ministry of Communications, backed by the police, immediately raided the Al Jazeera office in East Jerusalem and confiscated the channel’s equipment.

Until the latest raid, the broadcaster had continued to operate from Ramallah, a Palestinian city in the West Bank under Israeli military occupation; it was still operating in Gaza, where the Israeli military has killed numerous Al Jazeera staff and freelancers since the start of the war in October 2023.

The 2nd September military order had accused the broadcaster’s West Bank operations of “incitement to and support of terrorism”, and the Israeli communications minister, Shlomo Karhi, called Al Jazeera a “mouthpiece” for Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. “We will continue to fight the enemy channels and ensure the safety of our heroic fighters,” he said.

Based on the law, the Al Jazeera website is also banned in Israel, “including anything that has the option of entering or accessing the website, even passwords that are needed, whether they’re paid or not, and whether it’s stored on Israeli servers or outside of Israel”.

Main photo: Israeli soldiers raid, order closure of Al Jazeera office in Ramallah [Screengrab/Al Jazeera]