New radio station hopes to attract Israelis and Palestinians

Feb 20, 2007, 11:35 GMT

Tel Aviv - Israelis and Palestinians will for the first time get a joint platform to talk in English about their problems and current affairs, Issie Kirsh, the founder of a new English-speaking radio station in the area, said Tuesday.

The news and talk station, broadcasting from Jerusalem and Ramallah on 93.6 FM, is due to be launched Wednesday at 6 a.m. (0400 GMT), the South-African entrepreneur told a news conference in Tel Aviv.

From then on, the station is to broadcast 20 news bulletins a day until 7 p.m. under the slogan, 'In touch, in tune and independent.'

In between, Israeli, Palestinian, an Australian and a South-African anchormen will play contemporary music with 80s, 90s and current hits, and host talk shows in which Israeli and Palestinian listeners will be able to voice their opinions and question politicians from both sides.

The aim is 'to create a bridge of dialogue which I believe has been missing in this region for many years,' said Kirsh, who founded the ground-breaking independent Radio 702 station in South Africa in the 1980s to create a bridge between blacks and whites, 'and blacks and blacks.'

The commercial station, funded by private investors including Kirsh who put in a quarter of the 2 million US dollars needed for the first year, hopes to attract a target audience of 500,000 Israelis and Palestinians between the ages of 18 and 49, who according to market research speak English as a second language.

In the future, it also hopes to broadcast independent news in English to a wider audience from abroad via the Internet.

'We want to replicate what we did in South Africa in the Middle East,' added South-African News Director Andrew Bolton, who worked for Radio 702 for the past 12 years.

'It was only when black and white South Africans sat together and began talking together that reconciliation was possible,' he said, adding that although 'the Middle East is different,' the same kind of deep-rooted distrust existed between the sides.