Hamas Closes Al Arabiya news channel and Maan News Agency for Spreading False Reports

Hamas closed news media offices and a television production company on Thursday for what it called the spreading of false reports and working for Israeli television.hamas

The offices belonged to the Al Arabiya news channel, which is based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and to Maan, a Palestinian news agency based in Bethlehem, West Bank.

Hamas also shut down a local production company called Lens because it had provided broadcast services to I24 News, a new channel based in the occupied Palestinian territories that broadcasts in Arabic, English and French.

Ismail Jaber, Hamas’s attorney general, said his office had received complaints that Al Arabiya and Maan had “spread rumors and fabricated news” and had provided information that “threaten the social peace and harm the Palestinian people and their resistance.”

He added the closings were temporary, without explaining further.

The move came after Al Arabiya and Maan both reported that some leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt had fled to Gaza after the military ousted President Mohammad Mursi this month.