Global and Local Forces for a Nation-State Yet to be Born: The Paradoxes of Palestinian Television Policies

Tracing the history of Palestinian television industry from its birth in 1993 to the mid-2000’s, this paper analyzes changing television policies and discusses the influences of the Palestinian Authority and Israel in hijacking media policy for their own political purposes. Palestinian broadcasting regulations have been caught in a bind: reflecting the geographic, political and economic conditions of the Territories – fragmented, isolated and in a state of arrested development; and responding to regional cultural changes, such as the rise of pan-Arab satellite television, and political challenges stemming from the Palestinian-Israeli conflict