Jerusalem district police cleared out a small office of Al Jazeera television on Sunday. An inspector from the Israeli Ministry of Communications filmed them breaking into room 319 of the Ambassador Hotel in East Jerusalem with the police. The room is just big enough to set up a camera, a spotlight and a computer. Only foreign correspondents work from here, says Walid Al-Omari on the phone. He leads Al Jazeera’s editorial offices in Israel and the Palestinian territories and is currently based in Ramallah, West Bank.
In addition to the confiscated hotel room, Al Jazeera has two other studios in Jerusalem: one is in the Palestinian east of the city, the other in the Israeli west. Since the Hamas attack on October 7th, no one has worked there anymore, says Al-Omari, because the offices are regularly attacked by settlers. In 1996, Al-Jazeera was one of the first Arabic television channels permanently based in the Israeli capital. Now the offices are closed and the equipment confiscated.
On Sunday morning, the Israeli government voted unanimously to ban the Qatari broadcaster. This is not surprising, because on April 1st the Knesset passed a law that made the closure possible. Israel accuses the medium of endangering the security situation in the country and carrying out propaganda. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday that it was time to “throw Hamas’ shofar out of the country.” The shofar is an ancient horn used in Judaism to ring in the New Year. Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi said: “We have taken action against those who use press freedom to harm Israel’s security and our soldiers and to foment terrorism in time of war.” According to the Likud hardliner, there will be no freedom of expression in Israel for “Hamas mouthpieces.”
Walid Al-Omari denies the accusation. “I know all of my employees and none of them have ever been with Hamas,” he assures the SZ. However, he points out that the Gaza Strip has been controlled by Hamas since 2007 and that journalists are inevitably in contact with them. The government did not close the station for security reasons, says Al-Omari, but rather it was a “political decision.”
The editor-in-chief doesn’t know exactly what will happen next for his almost 100 employees. “We left the offices in Jerusalem in October, the office in Gaza was blown up, now all we have left is our headquarters in Ramallah, but for how much longer?” asks the Palestinian. He is worried about the safety of his employees. Most journalists don’t work in the office anyway, but are spread across the country, which also leaves them vulnerable to violence from civilians. “The ban gives the extremists the green light to attack us,” fears Al-Omari.
Even Netanyahu was a guest on al-Jazeera in 2009
As a result of the ban, the Qatari broadcaster is losing one of its most important flagships: the Jerusalem correspondence. Walid Al-Omari says Al Jazeera was the only Arabic channel that also covered Israeli national politics and not just the war. Israelis were regular guests at their headquarters in West Jerusalem, “even Netanyahu came to us in 2009,” says the journalist and laughs. Their viewers include many Arabs living in Israel. They are also the only media in the country with a permanent correspondence in the Gaza Strip.
Since Sunday, their programs can no longer be received via satellite or cable. The only platform they have left is Facebook, but even there the station already had a wide audience before it closed. The Israeli Ministry of Communications has not yet given any information as to when they will block the medium’s Facebook page.
The criticism against Al Jazeera is not unjustified. The station is financed by Qatar and serves the state’s interests there. Since the country not only hosts the Hamas leaders, but also financially supports the terrorist organization, the television station does not report particularly critically on Islamist militias in the region. Because Qatar is currently negotiating a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, it cannot be ruled out that the Israeli government wants to increase pressure on Qatar by closing Al Jazeera.
The decision is causing criticism abroad, not only at the United Nations and in the USA, but also in Germany. A spokesman for the Foreign Office said a good month ago: “A free and diverse press landscape is the cornerstone of a liberal democracy.”
The Reporters Without Borders association also condemns the closure. When asked by the SZ, it was said that the station’s “repeatedly tendentious, sometimes inflammatory reporting” was worthy of criticism; “Nevertheless, the closure is an infringement on press freedom that will further narrow the perspective on what is happening in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and Israel.” The journalists’ association also fears that a precedent will be set for other media in Israel. In November, for example, Communications Minister Karhi threatened the left-wing daily newspaper Haaretz to sanction.