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.
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur 
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