March 29, 2024

Hamas Closes News Media Outlets

The offices belonged to the Al Arabiya news channel, which is based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and to Maan, a Palestinian news agency based in Bethlehem, West Bank.

Hamas also shut down a local production company called Lens because it had provided broadcast services to I24 News, a new channel based in Israel that broadcasts in Arabic, English and French.

Ismail Jaber, Hamas’s attorney general, said his office had received complaints that Al Arabiya and Maan had “spread rumors and fabricated news” and had provided information that “threaten the social peace and harm the Palestinian people and their resistance.”

He added the closings were temporary, without explaining further.

The move came after Al Arabiya and Maan both reported that some leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt had fled to Gaza after the military ousted President Mohamed Morsi this month. The reports attributed the information to Israeli news media reports and unidentified sources, saying that six Brotherhood leaders were directing pro-Morsi activities in Egypt from a hotel room in Gaza City.

Hamas, which won elections in 2006 and took full control of Gaza in 2007, is an offshoot of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood movement.

In the wake of the ouster of Mr. Morsi, tensions between the Egyptian military and Hamas have been growing. Egyptian military officials have told state news media that scores of Hamas fighters and snipers have been making their way into Egypt to battle the anti-Morsi demonstrators, and newspaper columnists have accused Hamas of interfering in Egypt’s affairs.

Meanwhile, an employee of Lens said the Hamas-run government’s media office told the company that it was violating a January government decision to bar Palestinian journalists in Gaza from working with or providing services to Israeli news organizations and broadcasters.

The employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that the director of the Government Media Office told him that I24 News was a hostile Zionist channel. About an hour later, the police headed for the Lens office and closed it, based on an order from the attorney general.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/26/world/middleeast/hamas-closes-news-media-outlets.html?partner=rss&emc=rss