Aaron Boxerman
The New York Times / January 1, 2024
The authority’s official news media accused the Qatari-backed broadcaster of “inciting sedition” and “interfering in internal Palestinian affairs,” though it did not provide detailed examples of law breaking.
The Palestinian Authority announced on Wednesday that it would temporarily bar Al-Jazeera from operating in its areas, accusing the Qatari-funded broadcaster of “inciting sedition” and “interfering in internal Palestinian affairs.” The move comes several months after the news outlet was banned by Israel on national security grounds.
WAFA, the Palestinian government’s official media arm, said Al-Jazeera — one of the Arab world’s most influential broadcasters — must immediately shutter its local offices and “freeze all the work of its journalists.” The ban would last until the channel had “corrected its legal status,” the announcement said.
Palestinian officials did not provide detailed examples of how Al-Jazeera had broken any local laws. The Palestinian Authority administers some areas in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, including major Palestinian cities.
Al-Jazeera denounced the Palestinian decision, calling it “an attempt to prevent coverage of the escalating events witnessed in the occupied territories.” The channel broadcast footage of Palestinian security officers handing the order to one of its journalists.
“From this moment, any broadcast or activities are forbidden,” an officer said.
Palestinian critics and human rights groups have charged the Palestinian Authority with launching an increasingly authoritarian crackdown on dissent, violently assaulting demonstrators and intimidating critics of Mahmoud Abbas, the authority’s president.
The decision was the latest blow to Al-Jazeera’s operations in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza in recent months.
In May, Israel shut down Al-Jazeera in the country and shuttered its offices on security grounds, prompting an outcry from press-freedom advocates. Months later, Israeli forces raided the channel’s offices in the West Bank city of Ramallah, seizing computers and cameras.
Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have long labelled the network a “mouthpiece” for Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that led the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel that set off the war in Gaza.
Israel has also accused members of the Al-Jazeera team in Gaza of belonging to Hamas. In July, the Israeli military killed Ismail al-Ghoul, an Al-Jazeera reporter in Gaza, in an airstrike, claiming he was a member of Hamas’s military wing. Al-Jazeera has rejected all the allegations as baseless.
But there has also been bad blood between Al-Jazeera and the Palestinian Authority, which is dominated by the secularist Fatah party. Fatah officials have sometimes accused the channel of being a bulwark of support for Hamas, which ejected Fatah from Gaza in 2007.
The tensions appeared to escalate in recent weeks after the Palestinian Authority launched a rare operation in the northern West Bank city of Jenin to crack down on militants, some of whom are affiliated with Hamas and Islamic Jihad. At least five Palestinian officers were killed in battles with the militants since the operation began last month.
Pressed for examples of incitement, Mounir al-Jaghoub, a Fatah official, pointed to an Al-Jazeera clip critical of the crackdown in Jenin as evidence. Through a satirical skit, the video accused the Palestinian Authority of collaborating with Israel to crack down on Palestinian militants fighting against Israeli rule.
In its statement, Al Jazeera accused the Palestinian Authority of “attempting to hide the truth of events in the occupied territories, especially Jenin.”
Aaron Boxerman is a Times reporter covering Israel and Gaza; he is based in Jerusalem
