Israel raids and shuts down Al Jazeera's bureau in Ramallah in the West Bank

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Israel raids and shuts down Al Jazeera's bureau in Ramallah in the West Bank

2024-09-22 14:08 Last Updated At：14:10

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Israeli troops raided the offices of the satellite news network Al Jazeera in the Israeli-occupied West Bank early Sunday, ordering the bureau to shut down amid a widening campaign by Israel targeting the Qatar-funded broadcaster as it covers the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip.

Al Jazeera aired footage of Israeli troops live on its Arabic-language channel ordering the office to be shut for 45 days. It follows an extraordinary order issued in May that saw Israeli police raid Al Jazeera's broadcast position in East Jerusalem, seizing equipment there, preventing its broadcasts in Israel and blocking its websites.

The move marked the first time Israel has ever shuttered a foreign news outlet operating in the country. However, Al Jazeera has continued operating in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and in the Gaza Strip, territories that the Palestinians hope to have for their future state.

The Israeli military did not respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press. Al Jazeera denounced the move as it continued broadcasting live from Amman in neighboring Jordan.

Armed Israeli troops entered the office and told a reporter live on air it would be shut down, saying that staff needed to leave immediately. The network later aired what appeared to be Israel troops tearing down a banner on a balcony used by the Al Jazeera office. Al Jazeera said it bore an image of Shireen Abu Akleh, a Palestinian-American journalist shot dead by Israeli forces in May 2022.

“There is a court ruling for closing down Al Jazeera for 45 days,” an Israeli soldier told Al Jazeera’s local bureau chief, Walid al-Omari, in the live footage. “I ask you to take all the cameras and leave the office at this moment.”

Al-Omari later said that Israeli troops began confiscating documents and equipment in the bureau, as tear gas and gunshots could be seen and heard in the area.

The Palestinians secured limited self-rule in Gaza and parts of the occupied West Bank through the 1993 Oslo agreements. While Israel occupies and controls vast areas of the West Bank, Ramallah is under full Palestinian political and security control, making the Israeli raid on the Al Jazeera office that much more surprising.

The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate denounced the Israeli raid and order.

“This arbitrary military decision is a new aggression against journalistic work and media outlets," it said.

The Palestinian Authority administers parts of the West Bank. Its forces were driven from Gaza when Hamas seized power in 2007, and it has no power there.

Israeli Communication Minister Shlomo Karhi later described the raid as affecting “the mouthpiece of Hamas and Hezbollah,” the Shiite militia in Lebanon that Israel was targeting with strikes Sunday after cross-border fire from the militants.

“We will continue to fight the enemy channels and ensure the safety of our heroic fighters,” Karhi wrote on the social platform X. He did not address what authority Israel cited to order the bureau closed.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said it was “deeply concerned” by the Israeli raid.

“Journalists must be protected and allowed to work freely,” it said.

The network has reported on the Israeli-Hamas war nonstop since the militants’ initial cross-border attack on Oct. 7 and has maintained 24-hour coverage in the Gaza Strip amid Israel’s grinding ground offensive that has killed and wounded members of its staff. It remains unclear whether the Israeli military would target Al Jazeera's operation in Gaza as well.

While including on-the-ground reporting of the war’s casualties, Al Jazeera's Arabic arm often publishes verbatim video statements from Hamas and other regional militant groups.

That has led to Israeli claims by officials up to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the network has “harmed Israel’s security and incited against soldiers.” Those claims have been vehemently denied by Al Jazeera, whose main funder, Qatar, has been key in negotiations between Israel and Hamas to reach a cease-fire to end the war.

An order closing Al Jazeera in Israel has been repeatedly renewed in the time since, but it hadn't as of yet ordered the Ramallah offices closed.

The Israeli government has taken action against individual reporters over the decades since its founding in 1948, but broadly allows for a rambunctious media scene that includes foreign bureaus from around the world, even from Arab nations. It also blocked the foreign broadcasts of the Hezbollah-affiliated, Beirut-based Al Mayadeen news channel at the start of the war.

Criticism of Al Jazeera is not new. The U.S. government singled out the broadcaster during America’s occupation of Iraq after its 2003 invasion toppled dictator Saddam Hussein and for airing videos of the late al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden.

Al Jazeera has been closed or blocked by other Mideast governments.

Most notably in 2013, Egyptian authorities raided a luxury hotel used by Al Jazeera as an operating base after the military takeover that followed mass protests against President Mohammed Morsi. Three Al Jazeera staff members received 10-year prison sentences, but were released in 2015 following widespread international criticism.

The Israel-Hamas war began when Hamas-led fighters killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, in an Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel. They abducted another 250 people and are still holding around 100 hostages. Israel’s campaign in Gaza has killed at least 41,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which doesn’t differentiate between fighters and civilians.

The closure of Al Jazeera's Ramallah office also comes as tensions continue to rise over a possible expansion of the war to Lebanon, where electronic devices exploded last week in a likely sabotage campaign by Israel targeting the Shiite militia Hezbollah.

The explosions Tuesday and Wednesday killed at least 37 people — including two children — and wounded around 3,000 others.

Associated Press writer Natalie Melzer in Nahariya, Israel, contributed to this report.

Over 100 rockets fired from Lebanon into Israel, with some hitting near northern city of Haifa

2024-09-22 13:54 Last Updated At：14:00

NAHARIYA, Israel (AP) — Over 100 rockets were fired into Israel from Lebanon early Sunday, with some landing near the northern city of Haifa, as Israel and the Hezbollah militant group appeared to be spiraling toward all-out war following months of escalating tensions.

The rockets streaked over a wider and deeper area of northern Israel than previous volleys and set off air raid sirens across the region. The Israeli military said rockets had been fired “toward civilian areas," pointing to a possible escalation after previous barrages had mainly been aimed at military targets.

Israel's Magen David Adom rescue service said it treated four people for shrapnel wounds, including a 76-year-old man who was moderately wounded near Haifa, where buildings were damaged and cars set on fire. It was not immediately clear if the damage was caused by a rocket or an Israeli interceptor.

The barrage came after an Israeli airstrike in Beirut killed at least 37 people, including one of Hezbollah's top leaders as well as women and children. Hezbollah was already reeling from a sophisticated attack that caused thousands of personal devices to explode just days earlier.

The Israeli military said it carried out a wave of strikes across southern Lebanon over the past 24 hours, hitting some 400 militant sites, including rocket launchers. In a separate development, Israeli forces raided the West Bank bureau of Al-Jazeera, which it had banned earlier this year, accusing it of serving as a mouthpiece for militant groups, allegations denied by the pan-Arab broadcaster.

Israel and Hezbollah have traded fire since the outbreak of the war in Gaza nearly a year ago, when the militant group began firing rockets in solidarity with the Palestinians and its fellow Iran-backed ally Hamas. The low-level fighting has killed dozens of people in Israel, hundreds in Lebanon, and displaced tens of thousands on both sides of the frontier.

Neither side is believed to be seeking a war. But in recent weeks, Israel has shifted its focus from Gaza to Lebanon and vowed to bring back calm to the border so that its citizens can return to their homes. Hezbollah has said it will only halt its attacks if there is a cease-fire in Gaza, which appears increasingly elusive as long-running talks led by the United States, Egypt and Qatar have repeatedly bogged down.

The war in Gaza began with Hamas' Oct. 7 attack into Israel, in which Palestinian militants killed some 1,200 people and took around 250 hostage. They are still holding around 100 captives, a third of whom are believed to be dead. Gaza's Health Ministry says over 41,000 Palestinians have been killed. It does not say how many were fighters but says women and children make up over half of the dead.

Israeli media reported that rockets fired from Lebanon early Sunday were intercepted in the areas of Haifa and Nazareth, which are further south than most of the rocket fire to date. Israel canceled school across the north, deepening the sense of crisis.

Hezbollah said it had launched dozens of Fadi 1 and Fadi 2 missiles — a new type of weapon the group had not used before — at the Ramat David airbase, southeast of Haifa, “in response to the repeated Israeli attacks that targeted various Lebanese regions and led to the fall of many civilian martyrs.”

In July, the group released a video with what it said was footage it had filmed of the base with surveillance drones.

Hezbollah has vowed to retaliate against Israel for a wave of explosions that hit pagers and walkie-talkies belonging to Hezbollah members on Tuesday and Wednesday, killing at least 37 people — including two children — and wounding around 3,000. The attacks were widely blamed on Israel, which has not confirmed or denied responsibility.

On Friday, an Israeli airstrike took down an eight-story building in a densely populated neighborhood in Beirut’s southern suburbs as Hezbollah members were meeting in the basement, according to Israel. Among those killed was Ibrahim Akil, a top Hezbollah official who commanded the group’s special forces unit, known as the Radwan Force.

Lebanon’s health minister, Firass Abiad, told reporters Saturday that at least seven women and three children were killed in Friday’s airstrike on the building. He said another 68 people were injured, including 15 who were hospitalized.

It was the deadliest strike on Beirut since the bruising monthlong war in 2006 between Israel and Hezbollah, and the casualty count could grow, with 23 people still missing, a government official said.

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said the attack broke up the group’s chain of command while taking out Akil, who he said was responsible for Israeli deaths.

He had been on the U.S. most wanted list for years, with a $7 million reward, over his alleged role in the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut and the taking of American and German hostages in Lebanon during the civil war in the 1980s.

Sewell and Mroue reported from Beirut.

Follow AP’s war coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war