The medium is the message.
Through the centuries, the American Colony Hotel, like Jerusalem itself, has seen many lives: the building started out as a pasha's palace, with a wing for each wife. In 1881 a break-away group of American Protestants bought it and established a religious community there. In the years since it became a hotel, it has served as a meeting place for journalist and source, diplomat and go-between, Israeli and Palestinian. Across a divided city, people come to meet at the American Colony. Cool stone floors lead through stone archways to the dining room. You half expect your waiter to whisper some key bit of intrigue.
But today the waiters are taking orders for coffee, and the meeting isn't about dramatic secrets, it's about television - Palestinian television. Daoud Kuttab - producer, journalist, and president of the Jerusalem Film Institute - is explaining how the peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization will lead to the creation of a Palestinian TV station. If the process can avoid the almost inevitable hitches, a Palestinian station could sign on sometime this fall.
The right to broadcast may not be as fundamental as the right to vote or the right to create a Palestinian-run police force, but the people of the occupied territories are already debating the type of broadcasting service they want. Their debate over issues of press freedom and media diversity reflects a nation struggling to define itself.
"We are in a unique situation," says Kuttab. "We will have television before we have a state, so people like myself who are more independent-minded, rather than state-minded or government-minded, have an opportunity to influence it in one way or the other.... We are really getting into this whole issue of broadcasting cold turkey. We have no traditions, no laws, very few professionals."
And a great deal at stake.
As Kuttab says, Palestinian TV will debut before there is a Palestinian state, even before elections for the government that will run the Gaza Strip and the city of Jericho. It must, because everyone involved expects TV and radio to play a critical role in those elections. The new broadcasting outlet will shape the future state before it exists; those seeking to run Jericho and Gaza will want maximum influence over the station. Add demands by some in the Palestinian community - tired of years of military censorship - for diversity, coupled with a feeling that their own cultural identity has been crushed by the Israeli occupation, and you get the idea this little TV station will be pulled by massive forces. It will be the only station the Palestinians will get for a long while, because of the scarcity of frequencies and the absence of cable TV in such poor areas.
How free will it be? The Israelis control the frequencies, at least until the Palestinians have an independent state. So the Israelis could shut the station down, though that would certainly damage the peace process.
The Israeli government won't be the station's only worry. Within the Palestinian community are some who want the new government to have direct control over the station. But the Palestinian audience itself will work against any attempt to impose heavy-handed controls on the new station. Palestinians live in a sea of frequencies - amid Israeli, Egyptian, and Jordanian TV and radio, not to mention satellite channels from all over the place - and they won't be receptive to the kind of state-controlled television offered in other Arab nations.
"You can't fool them very easily; they watch Israeli television with a very careful eye and ear," says Kuttab. "We are in a fight to get away from the existing Arab models, which are just completely useless."
Kuttab's criticisms of neighboring broadcasters aren't quite echoed by those named to run the new station: executives at the Palestinian Broadcasting Corporation are politic about channels controlled by those governments long supportive of the Palestinian cause. When presenting news stories, "we will always take into consideration the other opinion, to guarantee or make sure there is always a diversity of opinion," says Sam'an Khoury, deputy director general for external and public relations at PBC.
But the commitment to freedom and diversity at PBC remains open to question. Radwan Abu Ayyash, director general of the PBC and Khoury's boss, gave an ominous address in January, insisting the new station must be under the direct control of the Palestinian authorities. "This institution is one of the main pillars for the building of an independent Palestinian state," he told a conference in Jerusalem. "It is deeply connected with the Palestinian National Authority and reflects its policies and natural guidance. In order to save this institution from any attempts at political or financial intervention, irrespective of its source, which could affect its national goals, this institution must be a public national trust under the direction and supervision of the Palestinian National Authority."
Ayyash spoke at "Palestinian Broadcasting: Promises and Challenges," the first ever meeting on the subject, held in Jerusalem under the auspices of the Jerusalem Film Institute and InterNews, an international journalistic organization. But a vocal group of Palestinians, including Kuttab, believes in creating a Palestinian state that is not modeled on the surrounding Arab nations. Topping the list is Hanan Ashrawi, former Palestinian peace negotiator and now head of the independent Palestinian Committee for Citizens' Rights. "Maybe we should ask ourselves two questions," she argued. "Do we want to be a replica of some existing Third World countries or some Arab countries who view the media as a tool of authority in a monolithic society? This tends to be repressive, autocratic, where every television station is surrounded by the army or the police for fear of the next coup d'etat, where television or radio is the mouthpiece of authority, and opposition is stifled.... Or do we want to be pacesetters? Do we want to be models for a forward-looking contemporary state that is confident in the fact that the, if you wish, clash of ideas, confrontation of ideas, or debate and internal disagreements are a source of confidence and enrichment of the overall Palestinian expression?"
The conference brought in journalists from around the world and produced a series of recommendations. Palestinian participants called for "clear provisions for freedom of opinion, expression, publishing, and broadcasting" in the Palestinian constitution and "the continuation of our Palestinian tradition, which has refused, during the years of occupation, any form of political censorship."
Today, change is evident, though it remains difficult to determine how deep it goes. Perhaps Abu Ayyash overstated his case back in January. Perhaps there never was a united position among those working to set up Palestinian broadcasting. Or perhaps the conference itself had an impact. After the conference, the PBC adopted its current name, dropping its previous title of Palestinian Broadcasting Authority, to reflect the fact that "it is semi-official, and it has to serve all the public," according to Khoury. PBC will be governed by an 11-member board of directors, three or four of whom will be elected by a larger, 72-member board of trustees drawn from the community. The balance of the directors will be selected by the national authority with the involvement of the PLO. That may sound ominous, but remember: the British government chooses the entire BBC board of governors. Adds Khoury, "We have written down very clearly that we would like to see freedom of the press, freedom of broadcasting, including the idea of more than one station in the future.... We, as people who fought for quite a long time against military and political censorship, have made it clear we are against any sort of censorship."
At least for now, PBC wants to offer opposition viewpoints and the widest range of opinions. It will have to walk a fine line in a community riven by Yasser Arafat's decision to seek peace. Islamic fundamentalist groups like Hamas have sworn to destabilize the peace process, as have right-wing Jewish settlers. PBC - new, underfunded, and untested in the face of laws and regulations - will face conditions that would try an ABC or a BBC.
The one wild card not being addressed by any of the players is Israeli censorship. Since the Palestinians will be using Israeli frequencies, Israel could pull the plug if it opposes what is being broadcast. Yet no one seems willing to name how, or if, the Israelis might attempt to censor PBC. Israel's ministry of communications says it is negotiating with the Palestinians only on professional issues - that is, frequencies - not on political issues. The negotiation of political issues is, at least for the moment, reserved for politicians and, ultimately, the army.
Khoury insists that once a deal is made between the PLO and Israel, it is the laws of the Palestinian National Authority he must worry about. Under the agreement, the frequencies "become ours unless the whole agreement falls apart. It's not a license from Israel to operate a station; it's part of the agreement, so the frequency will be ours. We are very serious about the peace accords. They're going to work hard to have them implemented, to have them work all the way through." Some form of voluntary censorship will have to be set up, since Israel could switch off the station if it likes, claims Kuttab. "I know the PLO won't use it to incite violence," he says. "They will use it for Palestinian nationalism, and this will not make the Israelis happy."
The debate over political control will continue, but, for PBC, there are a host of nuts-and-bolts broadcasting issues to settle, issues of frequencies, sign-on dates, programming schedules and equipment purchases. The Israeli/PLO agreement gives the PBC frequencies for one VHF television station and one AM radio station. Specific frequency numbers have been identified for the radio station but not for the TV station. PBC already has commitments for hardware and operational support from the European Union, public broadcaster France 2, and UNESCO. An Ecu 2 million contract has been awarded by the European Union to a French company for the transmitters PBC will need. France 2, under an agreement between the French government and the PLO, will provide engineering, administrative support, and training; UNESCO has promised US$500,000 toward the effort. Thanks to the aid, PBC already owns an outside broadcast van. But it's still in Paris and can't be moved to Israel lest it become a target for right-wing settlers. (What better thing to blow up than the symbol of the Palestinians' new freedom to broadcast?) As a result, six Palestinians have had to fly to Paris to train. When PBC will be able to take possession of the equipment is still up in the air.
PBC television's initial programming schedule will run 31/2 to 4 hours a day, with a half-hour news show in Arabic and three 5-minute news bulletins in Hebrew, English, and French, according to Khoury. Up to 21/2 hours will be devoted to local programming focusing on industry, agriculture, education, and "promoting the idea of elections." The final hour or so will be made up of Arabic films - likely from Egypt, the film capital of the Arab world - and entertainment series, including American shows, to be acquired on the international market. Khoury views his audience as the 2 million Palestinians in the occupied territories and the 1 million Arabs living in Israel proper.
Back at the American Colony Hotel, Daoud Kuttab describes how TV is already beginning to reach across divides in the Middle East. He is the first Palestinian producer to co-produce a TV series with an Israeli company for Israeli TV. His Thania Productions, together with AmythOS TV & Film Productions, is making Peace Chronicles, a series of video diaries that will show how three Israeli and three Palestinian families lived through and reacted to the peace process. Israel's Channel 2 will air it, and it has been acquired by stations in Britain, Holland, France, and Canada. Kuttab hopes it will also premiere on PBC's new station.
Such street-smart, from-the-people production techniques will have broad application when the era of Palestinian broadcasting begins. Kuttab says he'd prefer to see 20 programs shot on low-grade VHS rather than 10 on Super Beta, because a "lowering" of broadcasting standards will allow more local productions to get on the air. His greatest hope is that PBC television will create a production center capable of providing programming for the 200 million people who live in the Arab world. For that, PBC needs to be free. "The openness we are campaigning for could make this a very good place for Arab TV and filmmaking," Kuttab says. "I have dreams that the Palestinian area can become a kind of base for pan-Arab television and filmmaking."
