Palestinian soap in hot water over PLO plot

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As television dramas go, it was a modest affair. There was just one camera, a cast of 14 and all scenes were shot on the streets of Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank. The budget for the 10-episode series was about £120,000 - less than the cost of a single episode of a western soap opera.

But for the Palestinians, the television show Matabb marked a rare effort to produce a homegrown soap that would entertain as much as challenge its audience, tackling difficult issues of corruption and romance as well as the Israeli occupation.

Even that was too much for some. Before the first episode was screened, the state television channel, the Palestine Broadcasting Corporation (PBC), took the show off the air without explanation and has not broadcast it since.

Matabb's opening night should have been at the start of September to coincide with the beginning of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month of fasting, which is also a time for much-discussed TV dramas across the Arab world.

Since the ban, it has been broadcast on a private television channel available only in parts of the West Bank and on the internet in Arabic with English subtitles, yet the show has won a modest but loyal audience.

"We're trying to introduce our society as a society, and not only as a people under struggle," said George Khleifi, who wrote and directed the show. "We always show the struggle, but this is also a society trying to build itself."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2008/sep/16/israel.television

[oberliner]

1. Sounds pretty daft

"There is one European in the office, named Shprocket."

I guess American soaps have silly names as well, but Shprocket??

[Violet_Crumble]

2. Silly names in soaps...

A soap isn't a soap without a silly name or two. One of our homegrown soaps had two characters called Toadfish and Stingray. Of course, soaps pale into insignificance when it comes to silly names compared to the names celebrities and bogans inflict on their kids...

[LeftishBrit]

4. True - I think 'shprocket' is a kind of wheel...

still, soap operas in general aren't noted for their consistent realism, and silly names are common in them. E.g. one of our longest-running soap operas, "Coronation Street", had a character called Ena Sharples; not quite as bad as Shprocket, but not exactly everyday.

Mind you, if a certain vice-presidential candidate can call her sons Track and Trig...

[LeftishBrit]

3. Sounds like an interesting series! Probably as silly as most soap operas, but why not?

[shira]

5. the Soap was not anti-Israel enough

From Haaretz:

Among others, certain scenes failed to show the Israeli occupation in a negative enough light, they charged. The officials mentioned one scene in which a Palestinian gives a flower to Israeli soldiers at an army checkpoint in the West Bank.

They insinuated the series was influenced by the fact that it was funded by Germany's Goethe Institute and the European Commission, which would not back programs that do not encourage coexistence between Israel and the Palestinians.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1018539.html

This is a shame because it conflicts with so much progress that has been made recently in the W.Bank with law and order being restored and joint economic ventures between Israel and the PA. How hard is it for the PA gov't to agree to air a show that encourages more peaceful coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians? What a bummer. And some wonder why there isn't peace.