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Israel’s shutdown of Al Jazeera could facilitate more settler violence in West Bank
Rami Khouri, a distinguished fellow at the American University of Beirut, described Israel’s closure of Al Jazeera’s bureau in Ramallah as “deeply concerning”.
“This is very much in line with the whole policy of the state of Israel since 1948, which is to prevent real news about Palestinians or about what the state of Israel is doing to Palestinians, including colonising them and arresting them and torturing them. They’ve tried to prevent that news from coming out and they’ve generally succeeded for the last 40-50 years,” he told Al Jazeera.
“Their whole strategy is to produce a narrative about Israel about Palestinians, about Zionism, about the Arab-Israeli conflict, about terrorism, about the region, which says that the Israelis are good guys and the Palestinians and the Arabs and the Muslims are bad guys and they’re a threat. And this is a narrative that the Israelis have succeeded in disseminating all over the world. And the primary mechanism they’ve used has been the mass media, the Western mainstream mass media that includes well-known companies like CNN and BBC and The New York Times,” Khouri said.
He described Al Jazeera as “the primary instrument for informing the world about” Israel’s violations in Palestinian territory.
“But [the Israeli government has] stopped Al Jazeera from broadcasting out of Israel a couple of months ago and now they’re stopping Al Jazeera from broadcasting in Palestine. And this is really concerning because it probably means that there’s going to be a bigger onslaught of Israeli Zionist militant fascist settler violence all over the West Bank,” Khouri said.
Al Jazeera’s West Bank office is in area under full Palestinian control
This is area A of the occupied West Bank which is supposed to be under full control of the Palestinian Authority.
But the Israeli military comes and goes as it pleases. It conducts overnight raids, oftentimes killing Palestinians, destroying civilian infrastructure, destroying everything in their way to carry out these raids.
So it is no surprise that the Al Jazeera office was the next victim of these Israeli incursions in the occupied West Bank.
Israeli closure order accuses Al Jazeera of ‘supporting terrorism’
Al Jazeera’s bureau chief in Ramallah is reporting that the Israeli military’s closure order accused the network of “incitement to and support of terrorism”. Al-Omari said the order has been handed to Al Jazeera’s legal team.
The initial Israeli statement handed to al-Omari, as we’ve been reporting, ordered the closure of Al Jazeera’s office for 45 days. It said the decision was made by an Israeli general, and that Al Jazeera staff must leave the office immediately with their personal belongings.
It added that the rest of the details would be made available at the Israeli military headquarters.
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