The palestinians have launched something from their territories, and for once it isn’t a Kassam rocket.The first privately owned English-language daily, the Palestine Times, was launched Monday in the West Bank and Gaza, with its editors aiming to provide news about the region to English speakers abroad.The 12-page newspaper will cover Palestinian affairs, including the conflict with Israel and developments in the Arab community in Israel, said its editor-in-chief, Othman Haj Mohammed.The newspaper is not affiliated with any Palestinian parties, Mohammed said. The op-ed page of Monday’s edition included articles by the spokesman from the Hamas government, the spokesman of the rival Fatah Party and an independent analyst.With an initial circulation of 5,000 and a newsstand price of just over $1, the newspaper will be distributed in the West Bank and Gaza. Sales in Israel and an Internet edition are also planned.Monday’s edition led with a story on an emerging Israeli-Palestinian cease-fire. Other front-page stories included a report on the inactivity of the Palestinian parliament and on the battle between a West Bank village and the Israeli military over construction permits.Mohammed said his paper plans to cover life in the West Bank and Gaza from a Palestinian perspective. “Many foreign mass media have been telling the Palestinian story with their standards. Now it is time for us to tell the world our story with our standards,” he said.
Given that the mainstream media have resorted to obfuscating the truth, manipulating images, and outright lying in order to cover news from a palestinian perspective, I hate to think about the standards to which the Palestine Times will sink.
