DOHA: Qatari broadcaster Al Jazeera said that Israeli forces raided its office in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank on Sunday and issued a 45-day closure order.
Israel’s government last week announced it was revoking the press credentials of Al Jazeera journalists in the country, four months after banning the channel from operating inside Israel.
“There is a court ruling for closing down Al Jazeera for 45 days,” an Israeli soldier told Al Jazeera’s West Bank bureau chief Walid Al-Omari, the network reported, citing the conversation which was broadcast live.
“I ask you to take all the cameras and leave the office at this moment,” the soldier said, according to the footage, which showed heavily armed and masked troops entering the office.
The broadcaster said the soldiers did not provide a reason for the closure order.
Israel’s army did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has had a long-running feud with Al Jazeera that has worsened since the Gaza war began following the October 7 attack by Palestinian militant group Hamas.
The Israeli military has repeatedly accused journalists from the Qatari network of being “terrorist agents” in Gaza affiliated with Hamas or its ally, Islamic Jihad.
Al Jazeera denies Israel’s accusations and claims that Israel systematically targets its employees in the Gaza Strip.
The media office of the Hamas-run government in Gaza condemned Sunday’s raid, saying in a statement it was a “resounding scandal and a blatant violation of press freedom.”

The Israeli parliament passed a law in early April allowing the banning of foreign media broadcasts deemed harmful to state security.
Based on this law, the Israeli government approved on May 5 the decision to ban Al Jazeera from broadcasting from Israel and close its offices for a renewable 45-day period, which was extended for a fourth time by a Tel Aviv court last week.
The shutdown had not affected broadcasts from the West Bank or the Gaza Strip, from which Al Jazeera was still covering Israel’s war with Palestinian militants.
Al Jazeera correspondent Nida Ibrahim said the network’s West Bank office closure “comes as no surprise” after the earlier ban on reporting from inside Israel.
“We’ve heard Israeli officials threatening to close down the bureau,” she said on the network.
“But we (had) not been expecting it to happen today.”
Bureau chief Omari said that “targeting journalists this way always aims to erase the truth and prevent people from hearing the truth.”
In May, the network condemned as “criminal” the ban on it operating over its coverage of the Gaza war.
“We condemn and denounce this criminal act by Israel that violates the human right to access information,” the channel said in a statement.
 

LONDON: The Israeli Defense Forces have confirmed they are “reviewing” a video which appears to show their soldiers throwing the bodies of three Palestinians from a building in the West Bank.

According to an Associated Press journalist on the scene and obtained video footage, the soldiers allegedly killed the three men before pushing them from the top of a structure in Qabatiya.

“This is a serious incident that does not coincide with IDF values and the expectations from IDF soldiers,” said a statement from the organization.

No formal investigation has yet been launched.

The BBC runs a report on Israeli soldiers pushing Palestinian bodies off the roof of a building & the presenter then remarks that the footage is an example of the many fronts Israel is fighting on

No, its an example of the IDF committing war crimes. pic.twitter.com/9GHtbNNXXh

— Saul Staniforth (@SaulStaniforth) September 20, 2024

The incident happened following a 10-hour military assault on Qabatiya, where Israeli forces reportedly knocked over pedestrians as they hurtled through the town in armored vehicles.

Israel claimed its troops killed four militants in the assault. However, the Palestinian Health Ministry in Ramallah reported only one confirmed death, with 10 people hospitalized.

This is the latest in a series of alleged violations by the Israeli military, with human rights groups expressing concern over excessive force used against Palestinians.

In the video, soldiers are seen standing on the ground while troops peer over the roof of the building before pushing a body over the edge. In a second instance, soldiers are shown swinging a body over the side by its limbs, and in a third the body is kicked to the edge before falling.

Photos captured by AP during Thursday’s raid show an Israeli army bulldozer near the buildings where the bodies were dropped. Other journalists at the scene also witnessed the bodies being pushed.

Neither the identities of the dead nor the cause of their deaths were immediately known.

The AP reporter who witnessed the raid said they saw a blindfolded and shirtless Palestinian man kneeling before an Israeli army jeep and armed soldiers.