PA president lifts ban on operations of Al Jazeera TV inside Palestinian territory

“Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has decided to lift the ban on the Al Jazeera network and allow its crews to resume work in the Palestinian territories starting tomorrow morning,” Waleed Omari said in a statement to Israeli-Palestinian Foreign Press Association.

The Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority (PA) ordered the suspension of the Qatar-based channel’s broadcasts on January 1, accusing it of incitement.

The channel had aired footage of what appeared to be Palestinian security officers entering the network’s office in Ramallah and handing over the suspension orders.

Al Jazeera accused the PA, which has partial administrative control in the West Bank, of “attempting to deter Al Jazeera from covering escalating events in the occupied Palestinian territories” including in Jenin and its refugee camp.

At the time of the channel’s suspension, PA security forces had been engaged in weeks of deadly clashes with militants in Jenin, in the northern West Bank.

Al Jazeera remains banned from broadcasting from Israel, since a long-running feud with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government prompted his government to order the channel’s closure in May 2024.

In September, armed and masked Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah also raided the Al Jazeera office, saying it was “used to incite terror”.