Palestinian TV goes on the air
Palestinian TV goes on the air
By Khalad Ammar
JERICHO, West Bank, (Reuter): Palestinians took to the airwaves for the first time, flying the national flag on television from the lowest point on earth.
Viewers in the self-rule area of Jericho, who tuned to channel 13 from 3 p.m. last Monday, saw a test chart bearing the national colors and the words Palestinian Broadcasting Corporation (PBC) in English and Arabic. They heard Palestinian folk music.
"This is the first television station in the world that broadcasts from such a low point on earth," said Salem Abu Saleh, a PBC official. Jericho is near the lowest point on earth, nearly 400 metres (1300 feet) below sea level.
The corporation said its broadcasts could be seen within 14 kilometers (nine miles) of TV headquarters at the Hisham Palace Hotel in Jericho, the West Bank town where last month the PLO took over control from Israel under their peace deal.
Abu Saleh said there were plans to broadcast live street interviews with Palestinians in Jericho once the necessary equipment arrived from storage houses in Gaza and Jerusalem.
Radwan Abu Ayyash, the PBC chairman, said he hoped transmissions would soon reach all of the nearly two million Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
"We start from Jericho but we will soon reach Bethlehem, Ramallah, the Arab areas of Jerusalem and eventually up to Nablus," Abu Ayyash told Reuters.
He said Palestinian radio would start broadcasting between four and eight hours a day within two weeks in Jericho and in Gaza where self-rule was also launched last month.
Israel had impounded equipment donated by Germany in customs but Abu Ayyash said it had now been released.
PBC officials said the test was made from a temporary mobile transmission station because the Palestinian self-rule authority had yet to receive equipment promised by donors.
"The total cost of our final projects is US$55 million but the only thing we have received so far is a German studio and the promise of an outside broadcasting center from France," Abu Ayyash said.
Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza receive radio and television transmissions from neighboring Arab countries. Israel also has extensive Arabic-language programming.
Broadcast operations were provided for in the Palestine Liberation Organization's self-rule agreements with Israel.