Al-Jazeera English’s news director, Salah Negm, told AFP that the Qatari television station would explore all possible avenues of legal challenge to the closure of its bureau in Israel and would ” until the end “.
On Sunday, the Israeli government decided to close Al-Jazeera’s bureau in Israel, quickly leading to the interruption of television broadcasting. The decision applies for a renewable period of 45 days, according to official documents.
“Al-Jazeera correspondents undermined Israel’s security and incited violence against Israeli soldiers,” explained Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The United Nations denounced a “decision that sets back press freedom”, and several countries, notably the United States, a major ally of Israel, opposed this decision.
“If there is a possibility of contesting this decision, we will go all the way,” Salah Negm said on Monday.
Shortly after the Israeli government’s decision, part of the channel’s equipment was seized, including its broadcasting equipment. It was also removed from satellite and cable operators, and its websites were blocked.
“The equipment that was confiscated, the loss that we suffered due to the cessation of our broadcast, all of this is the subject of legal action,” underlined the information director of Al- Jazeera English, criticizing a decision “worthy of the 1960s rather than the 21ste century “.
Today, on the screens of Al-Jazeera’s Arabic and English channels, a message in Hebrew appears saying “suspended in Israel”.
“Arbitrary decision”
The Qatari channel immediately condemned the Israeli government’s decision, calling it “criminal” and declaring on the social network X that it “violated the right of access to information.”
Salah Negm also called the closure of Al-Jazeera’s office an “arbitrary decision.”
However, he downplayed the impact of its closure because the channel can rely on other sources of information in the absence of “people on the ground”, he said.
“I know that people who have a VPN [réseau privé virtuel] can see us online at any time,” the director said.
Al-Jazeera also continues to operate in the West Bank, a Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967, and in the Gaza Strip, from where it continues to broadcast live on the war between Israel and Hamas, which began on October 7. after an attack by the Palestinian Islamist movement on Israeli soil.
The Israeli decision comes after the Israeli Parliament, the Knesset, voted in early April for a law to prohibit the broadcast in Israel of foreign media that undermine state security, a text targeting the Qatari channel, which allows the Prime Minister to ban the broadcast of the targeted media and close its offices.
Major development between the channel and Israel: the death of its American-Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, killed by Israeli forces during a raid in the occupied West Bank, in May 2022. Al-Jazeera accuses Israel of having deliberately killed her.
Suffering and distrust
Since the start of the war in the Gaza Strip, Al-Jazeera’s bureau in the Palestinian territory has been bombed and two of its correspondents have been killed.
The bureau chief, Waël al-Dahdouh, was injured by a strike blamed on Israel in December, which killed the channel’s cameraman.
“Al-Jazeera lost some people, their families suffered, which is really different from other conflicts in this sense,” lamented Mr. Negm.
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), an association based in New York, at least 97 journalists have been killed since the start of the war on October 7 between Israel and Hamas, including 92 Palestinians.
The deaths of journalists “is not something we can just talk about politely,” Negm said.
“We must be wary, be cautious and alert people to the nature of the war that is taking place and how deadly it is for the population and for us as a profession,” he continued.