political bickering, and the absence of international or even national recognition for their work and its importance. Even though the situation is, by all means, difficult, Palestinian journalists insist that the presence of some 30 plus stations in the West Bank and Gaza is significant. Competing locally with only one state-run television station, these channels have offered the Palestinian people what many Arab countries do not offer their own populations – diversity and considerable freedom of expression.

According to the Palestinian Information Ministry, there are currently 32 private television stations operating in the West Bank and only one in the impoverished Gaza Strip, reportedly supported by the ruling Hamas Movement. Those are in addition to the official Palestine TV, which is the only station broadcasting via satellite, following the 1993 signing of a declaration of principles (DOP) with Israel.


“They are mainly low-power television stations that only cover the borders of a town or city, or even parts of the city. They are very local TV stations,” explains Daoud Kuttab, a Palestinian journalist who runs the Al Quds Educational TV. His channel is funded by Al Quds University and also receives aid from international and local organizations, as do many of the other local stations.
With limited technical, financial and human resources, the managers of some of the stations readily admit that they cannot compete with the major Arab satellite stations. However, they are quick to point out that their objective is to attract a local audience interested in local news and local issues.

“If there is a young martyr in Bethlehem, the local Bethlehem TV will broadcast the event for hours on end, from the minute he dies till after he is buried. On any satellite television, the event will take up a maximum of two minutes of the news bulletin,” says Raed Othman, general manager of Maan Network, a partnership project between nine West Bank television stations established in 2005 to optimize the available resources.

“Local channels also played a pivotal role during recent parliamentary elections to rally up voters to participate,” he explains, adding that his network is also aiming at creating more social awareness on subjects like women’s rights and education, two subjects often overshadowed by political events.

Most Palestinian stations were set up after the 1993 Oslo Agreements between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. “A period marked by decentralization of authority in the Palestinian Territories which enabled these channels to start broadcasting without scrutiny,” says Kuttab.

“These stations were set up by young, educated Palestinians who had no jobs and who decided to take advantage of the market need for such stations at the time,” says Othman. Prior to 1993, Palestinian access to broadcast media was limited to Israeli or Jordanian TV.

Today, virtually every Palestinian political group has its own mouthpiece. Fatah owns Palestine TV, nominally state-operated; a leftist coalition of political parties owns Watan TV; and most recently Hamas launched its own Al Aqsa TV in Gaza, still in an experimental stage.

Operating on insignificant budgets

Commercially, Palestinian television stations have made little progress since 1993. The cost of running an ad on some stations can be as low as $2. No station would be able to make it on its own without international financial assistance or local political subsidies. “The money must be coming from one source or another, otherwise many would have shut down by now,” says Kuttab.
Although revenues from ads can be minimal, the cost of running the stations is equally small, since most programs consist of inexpensive news broadcasts, and social and political talk shows where guests discuss local issues. Access to broadcast equipment is also limited, with Palestinian broadcasters going to extremes in order to smuggle a transmitter for their stations across Israeli checkpoints. “It’s a catastrophe for the station manager if one of the transmitters stops working,” says Qassem Ali, the director of Ramattan News Agency.

Israel has banned Palestinians from transferring transmitters through its checkpoints and roadblocks since the second Intifada began in 2000. “To get around that, TV owners have to smuggle the transmitters into the West Bank, and that on average doubles the cost of the equipment.”

Even though they have managed to survive the economic stalemate, and several political upheavals, Palestinian stations reliance on low-cost programming and outdated equipment has rendered the quality of their broadcasts well below par when compared to those of Arab satellite channels that most Palestinians have access to, and watch regularly. A study by Bir Zeit University in 2005 found that around 62 percent of those surveyed preferred to watch Arab satellite channels, while 26 percent watched local stations, and only 9 percent tuned into the state-owned Palestine TV.

Recently, some television stations in the West Bank have started to work together to weather their many difficulties. Set up in 2005, Maan Television Network stations share and exchange resources in order to provide a better flow of information between the Palestinian towns and villages, and to efficiently use available resources more efficiently. Othman says his network is a non-profit project funded by the European Union, mainly through Dutch and Danish contributions. The network channels exchange news and programs, contribute to a flagship weekly program that showcases social and economic problems of their regions, all “while trying to maintain objectivity and political detachment.” The budget includes a news agency and a training program for journalists with an allocation of $1.5 million over three years, he said. Othman says the network tries to improve its staff’s skills through training workshops and programs. “But at the end of two years or so, they leave to work for the higher-paying satellite TV stations.”

Ramattan News Agency’s Qassem Ali says donations from foreign countries often came with conditions, mostly a commitment by the station not to support “terrorist activities.” However, he adds, “they consider resistance to occupation to be terrorism and so while they preach freedom of speech in the media, in fact they are not encouraging it here.”

Based in Ramallah, Watan TV is one of the most watched local TV stations according to a study by Birzeit University in 2005, followed by Amal TV in Hebron. But Watan TV’s Maha Awwad, says the station is in financial straits. The quality of their broadcast, she laments, is being affected by the accumulation of losses and debt. “We have used up all our capital and our annual losses amount to 50 percent of our income.” Awwad said technical and human resources have also become scarcer adding that the director of one of the more popular shows has to be a “Jack of all trades” more often than not – taking care of the lighting, sound and set design.

The ‘official’ angle

Far from being at an advantage, the state-run TV station is barely coping. Hassan Balawi, of the Palestine Broadcasting Corporation (PBC), said Palestine TV has been working with equipment donated to it since the Oslo Agreements were signed more than 10 years ago. Its studios were shelled by Israelis during their Ramallah incursion in 2002 resulting in their complete destruction.
Balawi explains that the PBC had to “borrow the studios of local television stations” to continue their broadcast. Today, Palestine TV is based in Gaza and is the main source of information for those living in the area. But it hardly ever makes its presence felt in the West Bank. “I don’t even remember the last time Palestine TV covered something related to the West Bank,” says Othman.
Under the Oslo Agreements, Israel, sovereign over the airwaves, gave the PBC six frequencies to run its radio and television stations. A joint Palestinian-Israeli technical committee was formed in order to “take care of the future needs of the Palestinian Authority for frequencies,” Osama Abed, from the Palestinian Telecom Ministry told MEB Journal. The Washington Agreements stipulated that the PA inform the Israeli government of their intent on establishing a new radio or TV station and Israel would then reply, either granting or denying permission, within one month.

“The Israelis never got back to us, not a yes or a no. So we went ahead and gave them a temporary license,” says Abed. Adds Kuttab: “This committee has met only twice in 10 years and failed to take any substantial decisions.”

However, 53 frequencies – making up most of the stations – which were until last year illegal have now been recognized by the International Communication Union (ICU) as part of “the considerations concerning the protection of existing and planned analogue broadcasting stations”.

Avoiding Controversy

Saad Al Arouri, director of Amwaj TV in Ramallah, whose revenues derive from advertising as well as donations from several international and local institutions, says the financial situation has gotten worse in the past few months since Hamas came to power. “Some of our programs have stopped because the international NGOs stopped giving money. The Palestinians have always been subjected to collective punishment, but with Hamas’ election victory, the punishment became worse,” he told MEB Journal.

Rebroadcasting is also a major part of the programming grid for most channels, with many relying on Al Jazeera’s news reports and other programs. Kuttab says Al Jazeera has “no objection” to the rebroadcasting of its content and that’s what makes it one of the most popular channels in Palestinian Territories. Kuttab also points to what he sees as the more alarming phenomenon of broadcasting movies and DVDs without “paying any attention to copyright measures or protection of intellectual property using VHS and SVHS of low quality.”

Maan TV’s Othman says his network is aiming to do away with some of these problems and ensure better quality broadcasting by ensuring that exchange of information – mostly via email and microwave links and sometimes by phone – between the nine associated television channels scattered across the West Bank will allow them to pull their resources together. All of this, he vows, without any biased or politically-motivated reporting – a seeming impossibility in the heavily politicized context in which these stations operate.

It is precisely to stir away from controversy that these channels rely on Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya, says Kuttab. “They have mostly been very careful when reporting on internal tensions. Journalists here belong to small establishments and have no protection, but there is one area where they all agree, which is Israel. There is no controversy there and they report everything that has to do with the conflict with Israel in detail and sometimes the coverage is gory,” says Kuttab.

The “gory” coverage has earned Palestinian channels, particularly the state-run Palestine TV, endless criticism by the West of inciting terrorism. Othman belittles the criticism: “It’s not the pictures that incite terrorism. It’s the event itself. What would you do if an Israeli tank is shooting children? Show it showering them with candy?” Othman insists that TV must show “what is going on in the Palestinian Territories.”

He acknowledges that there is a “problem in trying to transform the media from one concerned with warfare and conflict to an institutional media capable of helping build a society.” This, he says “will require a better economic and political situation, and a lot more resources.”