Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used his official Facebook page July 26 to announce that he is taking steps to shut down Al Jazeera's Israel bureau. He claimed that the news agency "continues to incite violence around the Temple Mount," and that he "appealed to law enforcement agencies several times to close Al Jazeera's office in Jerusalem. If this is not possible because of legal interpretation, I am going to seek to have the necessary legislation adopted to expel Al Jazeera from Israel."
Al Jazeera's offices in Israel are located in Jerusalem. During the crisis surrounding the Temple Mount, representatives of the Israel Defense Forces' (IDF) spokesperson's unit approached the network on several occasions, asking it to allow Israeli representatives to appear on air, in an attempt to restore calm. One of the people interviewed was the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), Maj. Gen. Yoav Mordechai. He was invited to the network's studios after the July 21 terrorist attack in the West Bank settlement of Halamish, in which three members of the Salomon family were assassinated. In the interview, Mordechai said that Israel was prepared to look into alternative solutions to replace the metal detectors on the Temple Mount, while still preventing terrorist attacks, like the one on July 14, in which two police officers were killed. This was part of a larger attempt to stop the wave of violence, which erupted after Israel introduced new security measures at the site.
