Doha, Qatar: The Qatar Press Center (QPC) has strongly condemned the decision by the Israeli occupation authorities to extend the ban on Al Jazeera’s operations, keep its Jerusalem office closed, and prohibit broadcasting companies from providing their services for an additional 90 days in occupied Jerusalem.
The extension, issued for the fourteenth time, represents a serious escalation and constitutes a blatant assault on press and media freedom, as well as a flagrant violation of international conventions, agreements and norms that guarantee the protection of journalists and safeguard the public’s right to access information and know the truth.
The Center in a statement yesterday said that the continued closure of Al Jazeera’s office and the prevention of its journalists and crews from carrying out their professional duties amount to direct punishment for the channel’s professional coverage of the war on the Gaza Strip. It noted that this coverage has helped expose the scale of crimes and violations committed against civilians while conveying, through images and reports, the reality of the humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in the territory.
The Center denounced what it described as the occupation authorities’ systematic policy of targeting media institutions, pursuing journalists, restricting their work, and preventing them from fulfilling their professional responsibilities. It said such actions constitute a clear violation of freedom of expression, press freedom and the right to access information—rights guaranteed under international conventions, foremost among them international humanitarian law and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The Center also condemned what it described as the systematic repressive practices directed against journalists, including intimidation, arrest, injury and killing, in what it said were attempts to silence the truth, conceal facts on the ground and cover up serious violations committed by the occupation forces against civilians.
It further noted that the closure of Al Jazeera’s office forms part of what it described as a broader Israeli campaign targeting independent media and undermining its mission through repeated threats, field restrictions, arrests, the killing and injury of journalists during the war, arbitrary decisions to shut down media offices, and the enactment of legislation that conflicts with the principles of media freedom in occupied Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank. The Center also referred to the revocation of the credentials of a number of correspondents and their prohibition from carrying out their journalistic work.
The Center stressed that Al Jazeera’s correspondents and media crews have made significant sacrifices in their pursuit of the truth, noting that a number of the network’s journalists have been killed while performing their professional duties, while others have been injured or detained. It said these incidents reflect the growing risks faced by media professionals and demonstrate that targeting journalists has become part of a systematic policy aimed at concealing the truth and preventing the documentation of violations.
