Israel raids Palestinian TV station accused of inciting unrest

RAMALLAH, March 12: Israeli forces on Friday raided the Ramallah offices of a Palestinian television station accused of inciting violence, the security services said, after the government approved new measures to combat unrest.
The Shin Bet security agency said in a statement that the station, Palestine Today, backed the Islamic Jihad militant group and had been helping to fuel a five-month wave of violence.
“The channel served the Islamic Jihad as a central means to incite the West Bank population, calling for terror attacks against Israel and its citizens. Incitement was broadcast on the television station as well as the Internet,” it said.
Since October 1, a wave of violence has killed 188 Palestinians, 28 Israelis, two Americans, an Eritrean and a Sudanese, according to an AFP count.
Most of the Palestinians were killed while carrying out knife, gun or car-ramming attacks.
On Friday a Palestinian stabbed an ultra-Orthodox Jewish man in Jerusalem s Old City, leaving him moderately wounded.
The assailant, 18 years old and from the West Bank, was arrested after a brief search of the area, police said.
In the West Bank village of Beitunia, near Ramallah, Palestinians hurled rocks and at least one petrol bomb at armouredarmy patrol vehicles and troops fired tear gas and rubber bullets in response.
In the pre-dawn raid on Palestine Today, conducted jointly by Shin Bet, Israeli police and the army, security forces arrested office manager, Farooq Aliat, 34, of Bir Zeit, north of Ramallah, “an Islamic Jihad operative who had been imprisoned in Israel for his activities,” the agency s statement said.
Cameraman Mohammed Amr and technician Shabib Shabib were briefly detained then released, the Palestinian Journalists Union said.
An Israeli army order in Arabic declaring the premises closed indefinitely was posted on the door.
TV production company Trans Media, in the same building, was also raided and equipment taken away, AFP journalists at the scene said.
It provides facilities for several foreign and local stations, including Palestine Today.
The channel, which is based in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, said it continued to broadcast to the Israeli-occupied West Bank via its Lebanese transmitters.
Islamic Jihad denounced the “Israeli aggression against the nationalist media of the resistance,” calling the raid “another episode in the long saga of oppression by the occupation.”
Senior Palestine Liberation Organisation official Hanan Ashrawi condemned the Israeli operation, saying it showed “the will of the extremist Israeli government to silence every Palestinian voice.”- AFP