Israeli cabinet votes to shut Al Jazeera’s Israel operations; cease-fire talks ongoing
Israeli cabinet votes to shut Al Jazeera’s Israel operations; cease-fire talks ongoing
Israel’s government voted to ban Al Jazeera’s operations in Israel, following a parliamentary vote last month over what Israeli authorities consider to be biased coverage of the war in Gaza.
Press freedom advocates have decried the move on Al Jazeera, one of only a few international media companies with a physical presence in both the Gaza Strip and Israel throughout the war.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday that his government decided unanimously to shut down Al Jazeera’s Israeli operations.
“We will immediately implement our orders,” Israel’s communications minister, Shlomo Karhi, said in a video posted on X. “Whoever incites against the State of Israel and harms its security, will no longer broadcast from Israel and his equipment will be confiscated.”
Last month, Israeli lawmakers voted 71-10 in favor of a bill that would allow Netanyahu to ban Al Jazeera from operating in Israel, citing national security concerns over the Doha-based network’s coverage of the war in Gaza.
The regulations, which Karhi proposed shortly after Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack against Israel, would allow officials to “halt media broadcasts and confiscate broadcast equipment if an outlet’s output is seen to harm national security, public order, or serve as a basis for ‘enemy propaganda,’” the Times of Israel reported at the time.
The Committee to Protect Journalists called on Israeli authorities not to impose a ban and said that a “plurality of media voices is essential in order to hold power to account, especially in times of war.”
Al Jazeera did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Sunday.
Meanwhile, cease-fire talks were set to continue Sunday against the tense backdrop of a looming Israeli offensive in the southern Gazan city of Rafah and worsening humanitarian conditions in the Palestinian enclave.
Hamas officials, in Cairo on Saturday for the latest round of talks, expressed hope that a deal could be reached to pause fighting, after months of on-and-off-again negotiations.
The current proposal, submitted to Hamas last week by Egyptian mediators, includes an initial 40-day cease-fire, during which Israeli troops will suspend combat operations and withdraw from populated areas. At the same time, Hamas would begin releasing hostages in exchange for Israel freeing some Palestinian prisoners.
An Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the issue, said on Sunday that Israel was not sending a delegation to Cairo at the moment.
CIA Director William J. Burns is among those in Cairo for the negotiations, a U.S. official told The Washington Post, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter. Some U.S. officials view the latest talks as the “last chance” to avoid an intensification of fighting.
Hamas has long been pushing for a more permanent cease-fire. Israel has resisted previous demands to pull out its forces and end the war, saying it must invade Rafah to destroy Hamas’s remaining battalions there.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week reiterated Israel’s position that its forces will launch a military operation in Rafah regardless of whether a cease-fire and hostage deal is reached with Hamas.
Here’s what to know
More than 2,300 people have been arrested on U.S. campuses over the past two weeks, according to a Washington Post tally, as a wave of protests over the war in Gaza — many in the form of pro-Palestinian encampments — sweeps the nation. Police arrested 25 pro-Palestinian demonstrators during a sustained confrontation at the University of Virginia on Saturday, after law enforcement officers surrounded an encampment and used pepper spray to clear people from the area.
Israel’s Defense Ministry briefed more than 10 humanitarian groups to discuss the planned operation in Rafah, according to representatives from three international aid agencies, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to freely discuss the briefing last week. More than a million displaced Palestinians are sheltering there after fleeing conflict elsewhere in the enclave.
Northern Gaza is already experiencing a “full-blown famine” that is “moving its way south,” Cindy McCain, executive director of the United Nations’ World Food Program, said in an interview with NBC News that is scheduled to air Sunday. The U.N. has been saying since mid-March that a famine is “imminent” in Gaza but has not yet made an official declaration.
At least 34,683 people have been killed and 78,018 injured in Gaza since the war began, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants but says the majority of the dead are women and children. Israel estimates that about 1,200 people were killed in Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, including more than 300 soldiers, and says 263 soldiers have been killed since the launch of its military operation in Gaza.