The BBC has dropped plans to broadcast a documentary about Palestinian medics working in Gaza, following months of internal debate and external criticism.
The decision comes amid growing pro-Israel pressure on the corporation. It has justified the decision by citing "impartiality concerns".
The film, Gaza: Doctors Under Attack - also referred to as Gaza: Medics Under Fire - was commissioned by the BBC over a year ago but produced by independent company Basement Films. It had originally been scheduled for broadcast in February, yet never aired.
The documentary presents firsthand accounts of the systematic targeting of Gaza's healthcare system by the Israeli military.
The film follows Gaza medics over the past 19 months as they treat the wounded under bombardment, document war crimes, and witness the systematic targeting of the healthcare system.
On Thursday, the BBC announced it was "transferring ownership of the film material to Basement Films" after claiming that the project did not meet its editorial standards.
In a statement, the corporation said that the documentary "risked creating a perception of partiality that would not meet the high standards that the public rightly expect of the BBC."
The decision followed comments made by two of the documentary's directors, journalist Ramita Navai and Basement Films founder Ben de Pear. Navai, speaking on Radio 4's Today programme earlier this week, described Israel as "a rogue state that’s committing war crimes and ethnic cleansing and mass-murdering Palestinians".
When challenged by presenter Amol Rajan, she replied that it was not her opinion, but based on documented evidence gathered during production.
Basement Films responded to the BBC’s move by saying it was "relieved that the BBC will finally allow this film to be released". In a separate statement, the company said it had been given "no less than six different release dates" and that the film underwent "a long and repeated compliance process as well as scrupulous fact checking".
"Our argument all along has been to tell the story of the doctors and medics as soon as possible," it added, "people whom we convinced to talk to us despite their own reservations that the BBC would ever tell their stories".
According to The Guardian, internal BBC discussions about the documentary intensified following Navai’s appearance and a public rebuke by De Pear at the Sheffield Documentary Festival, where he accused the BBC of silencing journalists.
"All the decisions about our film were not taken by journalists; they were taken by Tim Davie," he said, referring to the BBC’s director general. "Tim Davie is taking editorial decisions which, frankly, he is not capable of making".
The decision also comes amid continued fallout from another Gaza-related documentary, Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone, which was pulled from iPlayer earlier this year after pro-Israel activists launched a campaign against it on the ground that its narrator was the son of a the Gaza Strip's deputy agriculture minister.
That film remains under internal review.
A recent open letter signed by figures including Susan Sarandon, Juliet Stevenson, Mike Leigh and Miriam Margolyes accused the BBC of "political suppression", stating: "No news organisation should quietly decide behind closed doors whose stories are worth telling… This important film should be seen by the public, and its contributors’ bravery honoured."
The decision to scrap the documentary by the BBC comes after a report earlier this week by the Centre for Media Monitoring (CfMM) found that the channel showed systemic bias in its coverage of Israel's war on Gaza.
The report found that BBC coverage mentioned Israeli deaths far more frequently than Palestinian deaths, despite the vast disparity in the actual death toll. On average, Israeli fatalities were referenced 33 times more per death in written reports and 19 times more in broadcast segments.