Israel has returned Associated Press broadcasting equipment, hours after seizing it in southern Israel and cutting off the US news agency’s live feed in Gaza.
Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi reversed the decision, leading to mounting international pressure.
The White House expressed concern, while the Foreign Press Association said it was alarmed by “the latest in a series of chilling moves by the Israeli government to suppress the media.” The UN condemned the move, calling it “shocking”.
AP Vice President Lauren Easton said it “denounces in the strongest terms the actions of the Israeli government.”
Mr Karhi said the equipment was seized because it breached a new media law by providing footage for broadcast on the Qatar-based Al Jazeera network, which has banned it.
His recent statement on the AP Bureau, until another decision is made by the Department of Defense.”
Mr. Karhi claims that the allegedly shared images “transmitted positions of our forces in the northern Gaza Strip while endangering them in accordance with the government’s security advice and decision.”
Earlier this month, the ministry halted Al Jazeera’s operations in Israel, accusing the company of being a “Hamas mouthpiece” and damaging national security.
Al Jazeera rejected the claim that this was the case and denounced the ban as a “criminal act” that violated human rights. It was also condemned by journalistic organizations as a blow to press freedom.
Al Jazeera has continued its operations in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, where foreign journalists have been barred from entering the area since the war between Israel and Hamas began in October.
The Associated Press reported that officials from Israel’s Communications Ministry on Tuesday afternoon seized the camera broadcasting a general view of northern Gaza from the southern city of Sderot.
The officials “handed the AP a piece of paper signed by Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi, alleging it had violated the country’s Foreign Broadcasting Act,” it added that the agency had rejected a verbal order last Thursday to ban the live to stop broadcasting.
The agency emphasized that it was adhering to Israeli military censorship rules, which ban broadcasts of details such as troop movements that could endanger soldiers.
However, the Communications Ministry accused the AP of broadcasting images of Gaza from the balcony of a house in Sderot, showing “the activity of the Israeli forces and their location.”
“Although inspectors from the Ministry of Communications warned them that they were breaking the law and that they should remove Al Jazeera as recipients of their content and not hand over their broadcasts to Al Jazeera, they continued to do so,” a statement said.
‘The law and guidelines make no distinction between Al Jazeera itself and the suppliers who transfer materials to the [news agency] from Israel.”
The AP report quoted Ms. Easton as saying that “the shutdown was not based on the content of the feed, but rather on an abuse by the Israeli government of the country’s new Foreign Broadcasting Law.”
“We urge the Israeli authorities to return our equipment and allow us to immediately restore our live feed so that we can continue to provide this important visual journalism to thousands of media outlets around the world,” she added .
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre described the report as “concerning” and said it believed journalists have the ability and right to do their jobs.
Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid said the seizure of a major American media company’s equipment was “an act of madness.”
The Foreign Press Association in Jerusalem warned that the seizure would prevent AP from providing crucial images of northern Gaza to hundreds of the agency’s clients around the world.
“Israel’s move today is a slippery slope. Israel could prevent other international news agencies from providing live images from Gaza. It could also allow Israel to block media coverage of virtually any news event based on vague security reasons,” it added.
Media watchdog Reporters Without Borders accused Israel of “outrageous censorship”.
On May 9, inspectors from the Ministry of Communications raided a studio used by Al Jazeera in the northern Israeli city of Nazareth and seized a camera and other equipment.
It came four days after the ministry closed Al Jazeera’s offices in occupied East Jerusalem, halted the network’s broadcasts on Israeli cable and satellite companies and blocked access to its websites in Israel.
In April, Israel’s parliament passed a new media law allowing foreign networks deemed a threat to national security to be ‘temporarily banned’ for a renewable period of 45 days at a time.
