The Palestinian Authority banned Al Jazeera in the occupied West Bank in the latest confrontation between the influential broadcaster and governments that have accused it of sympathetic coverage of Hamas.

The Palestinian Authority on Wednesday accused Al Jazeera of broadcasting reports that are “misleading, foster discord and interfere” in Palestinian internal affairs and suspended the network’s operations in areas it controls. Al Jazeera said it was shocked by the decision, calling it “an attempt to hide the truth” about events in the West Bank.

The ban comes as the Palestinian Authority battles militants from Hamas and its allies for control over parts of the West Bank, a fight that could shape the struggle for leadership of the Palestinian cause. The Hamas-led attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, sparked a war in Gaza, with Israel invading the strip and killing top Hamas leaders. The war has left a leadership vacuum in Gaza that the Palestinian Authority hopes to fill, and critics say Al Jazeera is broadly sympathetic to Hamas and reproving of the Palestinian Authority’s crackdown on militants.

Israel and Arab governments in the region have long been critical of Al Jazeera , which is based in Qatar’s capital Doha and funded by the gas-rich Gulf state. During the war in Gaza, Israel banned the broadcaster and accused some of its journalists of being militants from Hamas and its allies. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt in recent years have accused Al Jazeera of favorably covering Islamist movements such as Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood—a charge the network has denied.

“The crackdown on Al Jazeera has been because of its critical stance on the Palestinian Authority operation in the West Bank, and at the same time, the Hamas-friendly coverage of the Gaza war,” said Mohanad Hage Ali, deputy director of research at the Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut.

More broadly, he said, “the Palestinian Authority shares Arab states’ discomfort with Al Jazeera coverage.”

Al Jazeera didn’t respond to a request for comment. Many in the Arab world, including Palestinians, see Al Jazeera as independent and credible in a region where many media outlets are tightly controlled by Arab governments.

The network is one of the most-watched channels in the Arab world and is one of the few news organizations with a large presence in Gaza. Qatar is also one of the main mediators in cease-fire negotiations between Israel and Hamas, alongside Egypt and the U.S.

“Al Jazeera is the most credible and popular channel that’s viewed not just amongst Palestinians but generally in the Arab world,” said Tahani Mustafa, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group.

The broadcaster has a knack for going places other media outlets don’t, Mustafa said. This includes the Gaza Strip, where Israel has banned the entry of journalists since the start of the war. Al Jazeera already had a large crew there when the hostilities began. This gave the broadcaster an outsize role in on-the-ground reporting from Gaza.

In the West Bank, Mustafa said the Palestinian Authority feels that Al Jazeera’s ability to influence opinion is far greater than its own. The Western-backed governing body is already suffering from a serious legitimacy crisis, and Al Jazeera’s critical take of the Palestinian Authority’s operation against Hamas and its allies in the West Bank city of Jenin is only worsening the situation.

“The PA is losing the PR war,” Mustafa said.

Al Jazeera has long been controversial. Founded in 1996, Al Jazeera quickly built a reputation as an Arabic broadcaster that would air marginalized figures and groups, such as the Taliban and al Qaeda, considered extremists in the West and some parts of the Arab world.

During the Arab Spring uprisings against Arab governments that began in 2011, Al Jazeera was viewed as broadly supportive of Islamist movements that proliferated across the Middle East and it helped galvanize Arab frustration with autocratic leaders.

In 2017, Saudi Arabia, the U.A.E. and Egypt demanded Qatar close Al Jazeera as part of a broader boycott of the tiny Gulf state amid accusations it supported extremist groups such as Hamas.

Doha denied the accusations. But Al Jazeera’s largely pro-Qatar coverage of the conflict between Arab states created the impression that it wasn’t always an independent observer of regional politics, and it lost credibility among some Arabs, said Hussein Ibish, senior resident fellow at the Arab Gulf States Institute, a think tank in Washington.

In 2020, the Trump administration ordered Al Jazeera affiliate AJ+ to register as a foreign agent of Qatar. Al Jazeera said Washington made the move at the behest of the U.A.E., which at the time was in the process of a U.S.-backed initiative to normalize relations with Israel.

Al Jazeera has again become part of the story during the war between Hamas and Israel in Gaza, with some accusing the network of an anti-Israel bias. The broadcaster has had nearly nonstop coverage of the Gaza campaign , often with explicit images of destruction and civilian deaths.

Elhanan Miller, an Arabic-speaking Israeli journalist, said regular invites from Al Jazeera’s Arabic channel for him and other Arabic-speaking Jewish Israelis stopped around the time the current war in Gaza began.

He also said he thought the broadcaster was blurring the line between reporting and propaganda. This included, Miller said, referring to all Israelis as settlers even if they live in Israel’s internationally recognized borders, or cutting to live coverage of news conferences by Hamas’s military wing.

Israel’s government in May shut down the local offices of Al Jazeera under a new law that gives Israel the power to ban foreign news organizations deemed to be a threat to national security. Israel seized Al Jazeera’s equipment and blocked its broadcasts and website, and later also raided its offices in the West Bank city of Ramallah. Al Jazeera and Israeli rights groups criticized the move as undemocratic.

Israel’s move to shut Al Jazeera made it easier for the Palestinian Authority to follow suit, said Ibish at the Arab Gulf States Institute. The emergence of an Islamist-led transitional government in Syria, backed by Turkey and its ally Qatar, has also reignited concerns about the geopolitical influence of Islamist movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood, he said.

“That is the context in which the PA is acting against Al Jazeera, and in those circumstances, they will find a lot less pushback,” he added.

Write to Dov Lieber at dov.lieber@wsj.com and Rory Jones at Rory.Jones@wsj.com