A DARING television soap opera depicting life in the West Bank that touches on the sensitive issue of corruption among Palestinian officials has been shelved.
The cancellation, or at least postponement, of the European Union-funded Matabb show came after officials of the Palestine Broadcasting Corporation (PBC), run by the office of Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, tried to censor a perceived refe
rence to corruption in the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO).
George Khleifeh, director of Matabb, said: "They think that one scene insinuates corruption in the PLO. But this is not right. It is showing one person and that the PLO is investigating him. They asked that we change this scene."
The PBC had run previews of the show and had advertised that it would air with the start of the sacred fasting month of Ramadan last Monday.
But at the last minute Matabb was dropped, meaning it was barred from PBC satellite broadcasting's audience in Gaza as well as abroad. A local television station in Ramallah, Watan, has been running the series, however. Its director, Moamer Orabi, said it planned to show all ten episodes.
Mohammed Dahoudi, director of television for the PBC, denied the show had been cancelled. He said: "We have delayed it until the last ten days of Ramadan. We decided to put comedy on the air for the first ten days of Ramadan."
Matabb was filmed on location in and around Ramallah. It cost about 150,000, jointly funded by the European Union and the German development agency GTZ.
Despite the authenticity of scenes set at Israeli army checkpoints, issues surrounding family honour killings, work tensions and marital conflict are at the heart of the series.
Mr Khleifeh said: "We wanted not to talk only about the occupation. We wanted to touch on male domination in the family and society, corruption and Palestinians not confronting corruption and other problems."
Some of the episodes also touch on Islamic fundamentalism, he says, showing "how the situation under occupation influences the new generation, which doesn't find work and begins to look for a substitute ideology to find self respect".
In order to compete with Egyptian soap operas that have traditionally been the Ramadan favourites, Matabb relied on having local flavour for its audience in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Matabb means speed bumps, a reference to the bumpy daily lives of Palestinians grappling with occupation, internal conflict, corruption and a patriarchal society.
But despite the authenticity of some scenes that show people trying to pass through a checkpoint, Israeli occupation and the ups and downs of the "peace process" they are only background to Matabb's love triangles, work tensions and marital conflict.
The full article contains 457 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
