Israel's High Court of Justice rejected an Al-Jazeera petition against the Government Press Office (GPO) on Monday.
Al-Jazeera petitioned the court accusing the GPO of intentionally taking too long to issue press passes for five of its reporters.
The five Al-Jazeera employees, Amin Darajma, Mohammed Jamjoom, Hassan Massoud, Bernard Smith, and photographer Nabil Mazzawi all submitted their applications between October 9 and 24, but as of November 13, they still hadn't been issued their passes.
Smith was already in Israel when the war started and was renewing an existing pass, Massoud had arrived in Israel for the first time to report and was applying for a new one, and Mazzawi, Darajma, and Jamjoom were returning to Israel to report on the war and needed to renew passes they had been issued in the past.
According to GPO regulations, the office has 45 days to respond to an application for a press pass and as of Tuesday, that hadn't passed for Mazzawi and Massoud, who both applied earliest on October 9.
The regulations add that if the GPO has not issued a press pass within 45 days, it must send a message to the reporter informing them of the delay and then it has another 45 days.
Even so, Al-Jazeera filed its petition with the High Court, claiming that the GPO was intentionally holding up their applications "in bad faith and under extraneous considerations" while issuing press passes for "many dozens of foreign reporters".
High Court resoundingly rejects Al Jazeera petition
The High Court rejected the petition on a number of bases. Firstly, the court said that it does not have the authority to act as a supervisor for administrative offices and cannot dictate deadlines for them if they are not dragging out their work unreasonably. This is especially true, the court said, in cases where the office has not missed its deadline.
Furthermore, the court ruled that Al-Jazeera had not supplied sufficient evidence to show that the GPO was required to work faster than regulated due to the war or that it was acting in bad faith under extraneous considerations. The network also failed to present evidence that the GPO was issuing dozens of passes to foreign reporters while intentionally withholding them from Al-Jazeera.
As such, the petition was rejected and Al-Jazeera was ordered to pay NIS 4,000 for the respondents' expenses.
In recent weeks, Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi has pushed for the Qatari network to be closed down in Israel. Initially, he said this was because the channel's content was damaging to national morale, but changed it to the channel risking national security after seeking legal counsel.
The process to shut down the network's activities in Israel was started but has stalled because Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu won't raise the issue in the cabinet.
Karhi, however, accused Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for the delay, but Gallant claimed he has already given the approval required of him.