A camera lens captures successive scenes of heavily armed soldiers storming the streets of Ramallah, the roar of their vehicles breaking the silence of dawn. This is how the night of September 22 began, when Al Jazeera journalists found themselves in front of Israeli barrels. guns.
He said that fate had decided that “I would come to the office around 12:30 a.m.,” as Walid Al-Omari, director of Al-Jazeera’s Palestine bureau, recounted the beginning of the events, while covering an escalation . at the Lebanese border when he was surprised by the assault of the occupying forces in the office.
The episode (09/30/2024) of the program “Al-Marsad”, broadcast on the Al-Jazeera 360 platform (to be followed via this LinkShedding light on the circumstances of the assault by Israeli occupying forces against the Al Jazeera office in Ramallah, which is part of a series of successive attacks against the channel and its teams.
In his statements to the “Al-Marsad” program, Al-Omari narrated the details of the attack and its circumstances, as the live broadcast continued as part of Al-Jazeera’s continuous coverage of successive events in the Gaza Strip, West Bank. , and the northern front of the occupied territories on the border with Lebanon.
Dramatic scene
In a scene that seemed like something out of a movie, soldiers poured into the office “in full military preparation,” as Al-Omari describes it. The military order the soldiers carried was clear: “to close the Al-Jazeera bureau for good.” 45 days”, while the Al-Jazeera team had only 10 minutes to evacuate the premises before the doors were slammed shut with metal.
This dramatic scene was just the latest chapter in a long series of Israeli attacks on Al Jazeera. In May 2024, the Knesset approved an amendment to the emergency law authorizing the closure of foreign media institutions, and named it the “Al Jazeera Law.” reference to the main objective.
In her comment to the Observatory, Judy Ginsburg, executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, said: “The closure of Al Jazeera’s Ramallah bureau is extremely shocking, and seeing these scenes of heavily armed soldiers taking storming a newsroom during a live broadcast is provocative. and scary.
She also expressed her shock at seeing “the horrible scenes of manipulation of a banner bearing the image of Sherine Abu Aqla, murdered in May 2022”, and declared: “Seeing her image treated in this way is heartbreaking”.
A model of violence
For her part, Fiona O’Brien, director of the Reporters Without Borders office, considered that these events were part of “a set of violence and restrictions against Al Jazeera journalists in particular and against the press in general” and warned that “the law on Al Jazeera aims to impose censorship masked by democratic legislation. »
This Israeli law – on which the occupying forces relied to implement this closure – dates back to amendments approved by the Knesset in May 2024. It is a law that specifically targets foreign media and gives the government the power to close media institutions that it believes threaten. Israel’s national security.
The Observatory follows the story of attacks on Al Jazeera by the Israeli occupation, from the Gaza Strip to Jerusalem, where the channel’s offices were subject to numerous attacks, including the destruction of the Al Jalaa Tower in Gaza, which housed the offices of Al Jazeera and international media agencies. .
O’Brien explained in his commentary that this escalation indicates Israel’s deliberate intention to suppress press freedom and prevent the disclosure of facts. She said: “In democracies there cannot be laws that restrict media freedom in this way. What is happening now is the imposition of censorship disguised by democratic legislation.
Despite all these targets, Al-Omari stressed in his speech that Al-Jazeera will not stop reporting the truth. He said: “Closing the office will not stop us from continuing our work. These offices have witnessed the crimes of the occupation, and we will not allow our voices to be silenced. »