Al Jazeera staff in Israel and Palestine are living under a cloud of fear and intimidation following Israel’s banning of the organisation.
The broadcaster’s operations in the West Bank are also under threat. Al Jazeera’s international staff have fled to Jordan, broadcasting from Amman. Local Palestinian staff with Israeli citizenship from within Israel proper have relocated to Ramallah, the de facto capital of the Palestinian Authority (PA), in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
“Although we can still currently operate from Ramallah, if the Israeli military governor which administers the West Bank decides to issue a military order banning us here then they could raid this office, close it down and arrest us as well,” Al Jazeera bureau chief for Jerusalem and Ramallah Walid Al-Omari told Crikey from the outlet’s office in Ramallah. (At the time of publication, reports are emerging that Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has ordered IDF chief of staff Herzi Halevi to block the network in the West Bank as well.)
On April 1 the Israeli government passed a law enabling it to temporarily ban, for 45 days, foreign media organisations that it considers a “security threat”, an order that can be repeatedly renewed.
“As soon as the law passed, I told my staff to vacate the offices and go home. However, within an hour of the law being passed, the hotel in East Jerusalem, where some of our foreign staff were staying and working out of, was raided by Israeli police and all our broadcasting equipment confiscated,” Al-Omari said.
He said his staff had been working under increasing threat from the Israeli authorities and Israeli settlers over the years.
“We’ve been physically attacked and verbally abused. It got to the point where I told my staff over a year ago not to work from our West Jerusalem office — long before the Israeli ban.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu first touted banning Al Jazeera in 2017, while its Gaza offices were bombed by Israeli forces in 2021. Finally, following the rise of the most right-wing government in Israel’s history, the Israeli Knesset (Parliament), was able to pass the law banning Al Jazeera.
Al Jazeera is one of the few foreign media organisations that has managed to continue broadcasting from Gaza. Despite the Foreign Press Association in Israel taking the case to court, Israel continues to ban the foreign media company from entering the besieged territory and reporting independently on Israel’s bloody assault and what human rights organisations, and the UN, assert are repeated and indiscriminate human rights violations.
Al Jazeera has paid a high price for its defiance of Israel. Several of its journalists, and members of their families, have been killed in what Al Jazeera, the Committee to Protect Journalists and Human Rights Watch said were deliberately targeted attacks on Gazan and Lebanese journalists.
Approximately 140 journalists have been killed in Gaza by Israel.
Al-Omari is concerned about any future possible raids on his office in Ramallah, as well as that Al Jazeera staff operating in the Israeli-occupied West Bank could come under attack.
The West Bank is divided into Areas A, B and C. Area A is under the nominal control of the Palestinian Authority (PA); Israel controls the security in Area B and the PA administers it; while Area C (comprising 60% of the occupied territory) is under full Israeli control.
“We’re not only worried about attacks from Israeli forces on our journalists but from Israeli settlers who have been emboldened and supported by Israeli soldiers during their attacks on Palestinians and their property in the West Bank,” Al-Omari said.
Israeli settlers continue to carry out daily attacks on Palestinian communities, setting houses and other property on fire, killing or stealing livestock, killing and injuring Palestinians and forcing dozens of communities out of their homes and off their land.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported in February that the displacement of, and attacks on, Palestinians had spiked in 2023, before Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel. Daily attacks have continued since then with an average of four a day.
The dangers of being a journalist in the West Bank were highlighted recently on the second anniversary of the killing of AJ journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, whom an Israeli sniper shot in the head in May 2022 as she covered a story in Jenin in the northern West Bank.
Israel initially denied it was responsible for her death, instead blaming it on Palestinian gunmen. However, it was eventually forced to concede it was “probably one of their forces” after several investigative reports by a number of prominent international media organisations, involving forensic experts, concluded that the deadly fire came from the direction of Israeli snipers.
Veteran AFP photojournalist Jafar Ashityeh has covered the West Bank for decades and says he has been attacked by Israeli soldiers more than 20 times.
“I’ve been beaten up, shot at with live ammunition and metal-coated rubber bullets many times. I’ve also had my equipment deliberately targeted and damaged,” Ashityeh told Crikey.
“But since the Hamas attack, the situation has got far worse and covering each story becomes a dangerous situation from the soldiers and the settlers. We try to avoid main roads and also to film from as far away as possible to avoid being shot at. The days of close-ups are over.”
Omar Nazzal, a board member of the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate, told Crikey, “The decision to close down Al Jazeera was not only very dangerous for the Palestinian media but could also affect other foreign media outlets.”
Liberal Israeli daily Haaretz has also been threatened, while videos of journalists from prominent international media outlets also being harassed by soldiers and settlers have surfaced.
Al Jazeera is taking the case to court.
