Israel Shuts Down Magazine as ‘Tool’ of Terror Groups

JERUSALEM — Israel toughened its crackdown on the Palestinian press Monday by shutting down a weekly magazine and charging that the pro-PLO publication was a “tool” of terrorist organizations.

“It’s a political decision,” Ibrahim Karaeen, co-owner of Al Awdah, said of the indefinite closure. “It’s part of state policy to silence the Palestinian voice.”

Karaeen denied that the magazine was connected to any hostile organizations, including the Palestine Liberation Organization.

But Eliyahu Suisa, Jerusalem district commissioner for the Interior Ministry, said in a letter to Karaeen that he had canceled Al Awdah’s licenses because he was “convinced that English and Arabic language papers were funded by terror organizations and used as a tool in their service.”

“Democracy is democracy, but we still have to defend democracy from those who want to harm it,” Suisa told Israel Radio. “There’s a limit to democracy.”

Karaeen said the magazine’s purpose was “to offer the readers a moderate Palestinian view that was based on mutual recognition” of Israel’s right to exist and Palestinian self-determination.

In another development, 16-year-old Nidal Abdulhak of the West Bank village of Beit Wazan, died Sunday night in Al Ittihad Hospital, the army said.

Hospital officials quoted family members as saying he was electrocuted when following orders from soldiers to remove a Palestinian flag from a pole, but the army said Abdulhak apparently was trying to hang the outlawed banner.