An Israeli minister has ordered that equipment belonging to the Associated Press (AP) news agency should be returned, after it was confiscated and a live feed by journalists cut off due to a new law on Tuesday.
Hours after the equipment was confiscated in southern Israel, Information Minister Schlomo Karhi ordered the return of the camera, he said on X.
The Israeli Ministry of Defence wanted to examine whether the use of the camera on the border with the Gaza Strip posed any risk to Israeli troops there, he added.
"The Associated Press decries in the strongest terms the actions of the Israeli government to shut down our longstanding live feed showing a view into Gaza and seize AP equipment," the US agency had said earlier in a post on X.
"The shutdown was not based on the content of the feed but rather an abusive use by the Israeli government of the country’s new foreign broadcaster law," AP wrote on the social media platform.
It was referring to Israel's law enabling the government to shut down and ban foreign broadcasters if they are classified as a risk to state security.
The new Foreign Broadcasters Law, passed earlier this month, was widely called the Al Jazeera law as Israel used it to ban the Qatari-based channel, accusing it of biased reporting in the Gaza war.
Karhi emphasized that his ministry would continue to work on "preventing broadcasts that endanger the security of the state."
Earlier, he justified the confiscation and interruption of the live feed in Sderot saying that the news agency had "illegally" passed recordings on to Qatari broadcaster Al Jazeera.
Al Jazeera is one of AP's clients.
In response, Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid described the Ministry of Information's action on X as "madness," saying AP is not Al Jazeera, but is an "American media company that has won 53 Pulitzer Prizes."
Lapid said the government was behaving "as if it wants to ensure that Israel is marginalized around the world at all costs."
Washington vowed to look into the matter, which White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre described as concerning. Media reporting is "essential to the pillars of our democracy," she said, adding that journalists must have the "ability and the right to do the job."
"We stand firm in our belief in making sure that journalists have the ability and the right to do the job that's incredibly important for them to do," she said.
The issue comes amid tensions between the US - Israel's main backer - and Israel over Israeli policy in the war in Gaza.