The Palestinian Authority has temporarily suspended Al Jazeera’s operations, including its broadcasts, in the West Bank, accusing the Qatar-based television network of spreading “inciting material,” the Palestinian news agency WAFA reported on Wednesday.
The culture, interior and communications ministers made the decision jointly because the channel broadcast material that was “deceiving and stirring strife,” WAFA said without providing details on the subject matter.
The order said the decision was temporary but did not specify an end date.
The Palestinian Authority criticised Al Jazeera last week over its coverage of the weeks-long standoff between Palestinian security forces and militant fighters in the Jenin camp in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Al Jazeera Reacts
Al Jazeera denounced Wednesday’s decision as “an attempt to discourage it from reporting spiralling events in the occupied territories,” according to a statement.
It called on the Palestinian Authority to rescind the decision and allow its journalists to report freely from the West Bank without intimidation.
“Al Jazeera Media Network denounces the Palestinian Authority’s decision to freeze its work and coverage in the West Bank. It considers this decision nothing but an attempt to dissuade the channel from covering the rapidly escalating events taking place in the occupied territories,” Al Jazeera said in a statement.
The decision was not expected to be implemented in Hamas-run Gaza where the Palestinian Authority does not exercise power.
Fatah, the faction that controls the Palestinian Authority, said the broadcaster was sowing division in “our Arab homeland in general and in Palestine in particular”. It encouraged Palestinians not to cooperate with the network.
The Israeli military in September raided Al Jazeera’s bureau in the West Bank city of Ramallah and ordered it shut.
Israel in May issued an order barring the channel from operating and broadcasting in the country, saying it posed a threat to Israeli security. A court subsequently upheld the ban.
(With inputs from Reuters)
