As Al Jazeera was pulled off air in Israel on Sunday, the police, too, seized the news network’s broadcasting equipment from its Jerusalem offices on Sunday afternoon.
The move comes after the Israeli government approved a decision earlier to temporarily shut the outlet on the grounds that it has harmed national security in numerous ways. The channel was unavailable on Israel’s two largest TV providers, Yes and Hot, for several hours after the government accepted the decision to halt its operations.
As of Sunday evening, some but not all internet providers still had Al Jazeera’s English-language and Arabic websites up and running. In parallel, police officers and Communications Ministry inspectors came to Al Jazeera’s Jerusalem offices to seize the channel’s broadcast equipment and seal the doors.
The video released by the office of hardline Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi, who led the charge to shut the channel, showed Israeli officials entering the facility and documenting the equipment within.
The government, on Sunday (May 5) had voted unanimously to close the Qatari news outlet Al Jazeera’s operations in Israel, nearly six months after first announcing its intentions to do so due to security concerns related to the Israel-Hamas war. Israeli Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi signed an executive order immediately after the vote passed, and it thus came into effect right away.
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