Israel's curtailing of pro-Palestinian news outlets soars as cabinet approves ban of Al-Mayadeen news channel

Israel has banned reporters of the Lebanese television news channel Al-Mayadeen from operating, citing "harm" to state security during wartime, a joint statement from the Israeli ministers of defence and telecommunications said. 

According to Israeli media, the cabinet's emergency measures may also affect the Qatari state-owned Al Jazeera Network. 

The Beirut-based Al-Mayadeen began broadcasting in the summer of 2012 and has had reporters in Palestine and Israel since. 

"I've worked within the bounds of law and have always abided to the law", Al-Mayadeen's Jerusalem reporter Hana Mahameed told The New Arab. 

Mahameed, who has been working for the channel for approximately 12 years, told TNA she had stopped reporting for them as of Monday, 13 November. 

Mahameed also told TNA that she had not received anything official about the Israeli cabinet decision. 

Al-Mayadeen disseminates news in Arabic, English and Spanish. Its coverage has often been seen as pro-Hizballah, the Lebanese armed resistance organisation headed by Sayed Hasan Nasrallah. 

Israel's telecommunications minister, Shlomo Karhi, claimed that the Al-Mayadeen channel's "broadcasts and reporters serve the despicable terrorist organisations, and it is time to reckon with them".

Yoav Gallant, Israel's minister of defence, charged that Al-Mayadeen "has become, in practice, the abettor of the terrorist organisation Hizballah," whose goal is "harming the security of the state of Israel and its citizens". 

Omar Nazzal of the Ramallah-based Palestinian Journalist Syndicate condemned the Israeli move and expressed "solidarity" with Al-Mayadeen, promising "not to allow the silencing of the free voice". Al-Mayadeen has an office in Ramallah and reports from the occupied West Bank. 

Israel's decision to ban Al-Mayadeen is one further step to curtail the freedom of the press and expression, a trend which has only intensified since the beginning of the war. 

In 2019, Israel banned the pro-Palestinian Authority, Palestine TV, from operating in occupied East Jerusalem.