Daily calls Palestinians 'freedom fighters': Israel suspends ties

Israel: The government in Israel has decided to stop cooperation with the Haaretz newspaper after its owner mentioned Palestinians as freedom fighters.

In a speech Haaretz owner Amos Schocken delivered in London, he made such a remark about Palestinians.

It is learned that multiple Israeli state ministries, apart from the Interior Ministry, announced the suspension of ties with the daily, Anadolu Agency reported.

As per the Israeli news outlet Israel Hayom, the Interior Ministry's directive in response to Schocken's statement includes a stoppage of cooperation with the daily. The ministry also demanded an apology from Schocken.

However, Schocken expressed regret later in a press conference over his comments at the London speech. He said that as for the Palestinian group Hamas, they are not freedom fighters.

In his London speech, Schocken had come down over Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu regime. He had said that Netanyahu's government doesn't care about imposing a cruel apartheid regime on the Palestinian population. The government dismisses the costs of both sides for defending the settlements while fighting the Palestinian "freedom fighters", whom Israel calls terrorists, he said.

He called the current situation in Gaza the "second Nakba". Nakba means "catastrophe", which happened in 1948 when masses of Palestinian Arabs were displaced from their homelands before Israel was founded.

Schocken called for sanctions on Israel and said that it is the only way to achieve a Palestinian state.

Following the newspaper owner's statement, the Israeli Culture Ministry stated that it would immediately stop all advertising and collaborations with Haaretz. Also, an editorial in Haaretz on Wednesday asserting that what Israel is doing in Gaza is ethnic cleansing intensified the controversy.

"If it looks like ethnic cleansing, it probably is," Anadolu Agency quoted from the editorial.