TRANSCRIPT
"Our Al Jazeera office in Ramallah which is in the occupied West Bank, the bureau has been raided. Israeli troops have stormed the network office. They've received a military order that will shut down the bureau for 45 days. This is something that was potentially expected."
That was Al Jazeera English reporting live on the latest efforts by the Israeli government to shut down their operations.
The move was expected after a similar raid of the Qatari broadcaster's bureau in occupied East Jerusalem earlier this year in May, with police seizing equipment, preventing its broadcasts in Israel and blocking its websites.
Walid al-Omari is Al Jazeera's Ramallah bureau chief.
He says this latest action has severely limited Al Jazeera's coverage of Israeli military actions in the occupied West Bank.
"They told us that it's closed now. We will stop working and nobody can go inside the office. This is the situation. It means that they extended the closure, the closure of our office, the shut down of our office in Jerusalem and banning our work inside of Israel to the West Bank. They extended to the West Bank now, which means that Al Jazeera cannot work inside Israel and inside the West Bank. "
Al Jazeera has condemned the raids and closures as an affront to press freedom and the very principles of journalism, and an attempt to silence their reporting which has been critical of the Israeli military's action in Gaza and Lebanon.
This comes after a recent ruling from the International Court of Justice reaffirmed that Israel's ongoing occupation of Palestinian territories including the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip is an illegal act of aggression.
This was then followed by a resolution from the U-N General Assembly last week [[WED 18 Sept]] demanding Israel withdraw from these regions.
Meanwhile, significant escalations between Israel and Hezbollah as the United Nations warns of an imminent region-wide catastrophe.
Hezbollah says it's responding to an Israeli airstrike in Beirut on Friday that killed at least 45 people, including one of its top leaders.
The Lebanese militant and political group says it has launched more than 100 rockets at military targets across northern Israel.
Israeli army chief Herzi Halevi says the price that Hezbollah pays is increasing.
(Hebrew then translated into English): "Our attacks will increase. We have attacked hundreds of terrorist targets in Lebanon in recent days. Today, this morning, Hezbollah fired once more towards the north. This is firing at civilians. No sovereign country can allow such a threat to its citizens and its sovereignty."
Israel and Lebanon exchanged heavy fire, with Israeli warplanes carrying out the most intense bombardment in almost a year of war across Lebanon's south, while Hezbollah claimed rocket attacks on military targets in Israel's north.
Residents in Haifa in northern Israel spoke of the stress and uncertainty they felt when hearing Israel's interception system hitting dozens of Hezbollah rockets that rained down.
"We were at Roni's house and we started hearing rockets going off and blasts. We didn't hear any sirens but it was like (it) started around I think 1, 1am, 12am. I went home and heard the bombs go off all night."
These exchanges of missile and rocket fire follow an Israeli air strike that levelled a multi-storey residential building in the Lebanese capital Beirut last Friday which killed at least 45 people including two Hezbollah commanders and children.
It also follows attacks on networks of pagers and radio devices used by Hezbollah across Lebanon which wounded thousands and killed at least 37 people including children.
Hezbollah's Deputy Secretary-General Naim Qassem says they will not stop their attacks on Israel until Israel stops their assault on Gaza which has, so far, killed over 41,400 Palestinians.
IN-LANGUAGE (Arabic) TRANSLATED: "The Lebanese support front for Gaza will continue, no matter how long it takes until the war on Gaza ends. Secondly, the people of the north (referring to Israelis) won't return; rather, displacement will increase, and support will expand. The Israeli military solution only deepens Israel's dilemma and that of the northern population without solving their problems. So, go to Gaza and stop the war."
And in Gaza, Israel has bombed another two schools sheltering displaced Palestinians, killing at least seven people, just one day after 22 people were killed in another attack on a school.
Israel claims the schools were being used by Hamas militants but has not provided evidence.
Nezar Zaqout [[zah-KOOT]], a displaced man in Khan Younis, says the daily struggles of Gazans have been forgotten amid the recent escalation between Israel and Hezbollah.
IN-LANGUAGE (Arabic) TRANSLATED: "All the news and all the media now focuses on Lebanon. Gaza was forgotten. Every day we heard that there was hope for negotiations, or new news that they were trying to solve the issue of the displaced by returning the people of Gaza to the north and returning the people of the south to their homes in Rafah, and the people of Khan Younis to their governorate. But we have become completely forgotten. There is no news about us in the media. The news and focus are on Lebanon and Hezbollah and what is happening there. We have been suffering and drowning in rain water for a year, and we have been tired for a year and no one cares about us at all."
Husam Zomlot, Palestinian Ambassador to the United Kingdom, says Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will not allow for a de-escalation in tensions in both Lebanon and Gaza.
"Nobody is expecting things to de-escalate. A ceasefire deal was on the table for the last four months, a Security Council resolution for that matter, and simply (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu has refused all these offers. And I think it is well documented now that the Israeli government has not only changed the goalposts when it came to the negotiations about the ceasefire, but the whole pitch all together. So everybody is hurt, is worried, is concerned, is really bleeding and everybody is bracing for the worst."
