THE sounds of gunfire and teargas continue around the Al Jazeera offices in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, after Israeli soldiers raided and shuttered the bureau.
Heavily armed and masked Israeli soldiers forcefully entered the building where Al Jazeera’s bureau is and handed the 45-day closure order to the network’s West Bank bureau chief Walid al-Omari early on Sunday.
They did not provide a reason for the decision.
Speaking over the phone from Ramallah, Al Jazeera’s Nida Ibrahim said the West Bank raid and closure order “comes as no surprise” after the earlier ban on reporting from inside Israel.
“We’ve heard Israeli officials threatening to close down the bureau. We’ve heard the government discussing this, asking the military ruler in the occupied West Bank to close down and shut down the channel. But we [had] not been expecting it to happen today,” Ibrahim said.
Sunday’s raid comes just months after the Israeli government banned Al Jazeera from operating inside Israel in May.
That initial closure order was also for 45 days, but it has been renewed and Al Jazeera journalists are still unable to report from inside the country.
After the raid, al-Omari – the bureau chief – raised concerns about what Israeli soldiers may do to the office.
“Targeting journalists this way always aims to erase the truth and prevent people from hearing the truth,” he said.
The Government Media Office in Gaza called the Israeli move a “deafening scandal”.
“We call on all media organisations and groups that deal with human rights in the world to condemn this heinous crime … that is a blatant violation of press and media freedom,” it said.
