Source: The Guardian

6th Aug 2017

Israel has moved to ban al-Jazeera from operating in the country and in the occupied territories, joining a boycott by Jordan, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia which have all accused the network of sponsoring terrorism.

The communications minister, Ayoob Kara, said press cards for al-Jazeera reporters would be revoked. His announcement follows a vow the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, made in July to close the Jerusalem office of the Qatari state-funded news network.

The move had been foreshadowed in recent weeks as a diplomatic standoff simmered between Qatar and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), which had made shutting down the network central to a list of demands delivered to the ruling family in Doha.

The GCC was following a cue from Riyadh, which moved to isolate Qatar in June, whose leaders it accuses of backing Saudi Arabia’s regional foes Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood, and of sowing division in the region.

Israel is not a party to the Saudi-led demands, but it had long been scathing of al-Jazeera’s coverage of the Palestinian conflict, accusing the network of deep ties to Hamas and other militant groups in Gaza and the West Bank. The defence minister, Avigdor Lieberman, has described some of the coverage as “Nazi Germany-style” propaganda.

The move further aligns the interests of the Gulf states and the Netanyahu government, which have grown closer in recent years primarily because of common views over Iran and, more lately, the Muslim Brotherhood, which has links to Hamas. All claim that al-Jazeera Arabic has incited violence through its coverage of regional conflicts.

Qatar has long argued the channel gives a voice to all stakeholders in regional affairs, and has regularly scheduled interviews with Israeli government officials – one of the few Arab networks to have done so.

Al-Jazeera’s coverage had nonetheless been a key component of a grievance that had festered among its close neighbours for years before erupting after Donald Trump’s high-profile visit to Riyadh in May, during which he pivoted US foreign policy away from Iran and towards Saudi Arabia, a traditional Washington ally.

The Saudi leadership, in particular Mohammed bin Salman, who was anointed crown prince and heir to the throne weeks later, moved quickly to assert its authority. Nearly two months later, however, Qatar has ridden out an air, land and sea blockade and defied demands to sever ties with Tehran or the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Israeli announcement came as the standoff shows no sign of ending. “Lately, almost all countries in our region determined that al-Jazeera supports terrorism, supports religious radicalisation,” said Kara. “And when we see that all these countries have determined as fact that al-Jazeera is a tool of the Islamic State, Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran, and we are the only one who have not determined that, then something delusional is happening here.”

Al-Jazeera did not respond to the development, and the Israeli government offered no timetable for the shutdown. Nor was not immediately clear if the announcement included reporters from al-Jazeera English, which has a separate editorial team and is not considered by the network’s critics to be as strident as the Arabic network.