“[Vyriausybė] unanimously decided: the inciting channel Al Jazeera in Israel will be closed,” Netanyahu said on the X social network.
“There will be no freedom of speech for Hamas mouthpieces in Israel,” Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi said in a separate joint statement with Netanyahu. “Al Jazeera will be shut down immediately and its equipment confiscated.”
Sh. Karhi issued an order to seize devices it said were used to transmit the channel’s content, including cameras, microphones, servers and laptops, as well as wireless transmission equipment and some mobile phones, according to the statement.
AFP news agency correspondents reported on Sunday that hours after the Israeli government announced an order to shut down Al Jazeera for an initial period of 45 days, the Arabic and English-language channels were interrupted after a message in Hebrew appeared on the screen saying that they are stopped in Israel.
Walid al-Omari, head of Al Jazeera’s bureaus in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, responded to the decision by saying it followed a “campaign of easy victories by far-right ministers” in Israel.
According to him, the broadcaster was informed of the closure of Al Jazeera’s offices in Israel and the confiscation of its broadcasting equipment.
W. al-Omari also said that Al Jazeera’s website broadcasts would be restricted, adding that the restrictions would not legally apply in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Nor will they apply to the Gaza Strip, from which Al Jazeera still reports on Israel’s war with Hamas.
The media outlet itself condemned the Israeli government’s move as criminal.
“We condemn this criminal act by Israel that violates the human right to information,” X said in a statement carried by Al Jazeera Arabic.
Hamas also condemned the Israeli government’s decision as a violation of press freedom and an effort to cover up the truth about the war.
The Islamist militant group, whose unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7 sparked the war in the Gaza Strip, said in a statement that the Jewish state’s decision to shut down the channel was a “repressive and retaliatory measure against Al Jazeera’s professional role in exposing crimes and abuses.” [Gazos Ruože]”, and “there is a declared war on journalists, […] which aims to conceal the truth, the climax’.
