Palestinian satellite television (PalSat) new tv channel aimed at Israeli Arabs, named 'F48' (Falastin 1948) after the Arabic word for Palestine and the year of Israel's creation, has been shut down just days after launch, reported AP.
The channel's production site, based in Nazareth, has apparently been shut down over concerns of its funding by the Palestinian Authority, and claims that the channel had not obtained an operating permit.
Yossi Kuperwasser, a former Israeli official involved in monitoring Arabic media, claims that the channel is a "propaganda tool" for Abbas. "We don't need foreign intervention," he told AP.
The Palestinian Authority's Communications Minister, Riyad al-Hassan, told YNet News that Netanyahu wants to shut the channel down because Israel does not want there to be media outlets that show Israel's Arabs the explicit neglect they suffer.
Funded by the Palestinian Authority and the PLO, the channel is an attempt by Palestinians to connect more with the 1.4 million Israeli-Arabs. "We are all one people and need to communicate with each other," Riad Hassan, head of the West Bank-based Palestinian Broadcasting Corp., told AP.
P48 had planned to focus on social and cultural programs, rather than news features which are costly to produce and potentially politically sensitive. Palestinian television only occasionally shows programs about culture and literature, produced by Israeli Arab companies. Mainstream Israeli television is in Hebrew and geared towards Jewish viewers.
The channel has been forced into operating from a makeshift studio in the parking lot of a hotel in a Palestinian-run part of the West Bank. Hosts Doraid Liddawi and Afaf Sheni are continuing to host a two-hour morning show as the main feature of the channel, with the remaining airtime showing cartoons and imported soap operas and films.
