Media : TV Station Gives Palestinians a Voice--But No Picture : Palestinian Broadcasting Corp. has great dreams of unifying its people. But it must first overcome a lack of funds and internal power struggles.

In Room 123 on the second floor of the Hisham Palace Hotel, just off Jericho’s central square, Ali Rayyan switched on the computer, then the video recorder, the television monitor, the cassette player and finally the transmitter--Palestinian Television was on the air.

With the Palestinian flag of red, black, white and green reshaped into a test pattern and the popular Lebanese singer Fairuz Rahbani singing from her album “Jerusalem in My Heart,” Palestinian Television began another day of experimental broadcasts from its tiny, makeshift studio.

“We hope people listen to us for Fairuz’s songs because so far we have no pictures to offer them,” said Rayyan, who was sent by the Palestine Liberation Organization to establish an information and media center here as part of the autonomous Palestinian government in Jericho and the Gaza Strip. “The pictures will come, and soon we hope.”

With promises of equipment and funds from European donors, the Palestinian Broadcasting Corp. wants to launch itself with radio and television coverage of PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat’s arrival as head of the new Palestinian governing council and thus to establish itself as one of the first nation-building institutions.

“Our main aim is to be the voice of the Palestinian people, a nation that has been without its own voice up to now,” Saman Khoury, deputy chairman of Palestinian Broadcasting, said in Jerusalem. “We want to bring together our people who have been scattered for so many years. We want to unify our nation. We want to articulate its aspirations.”

Palestinian Broadcasting has plans to match those ambitions. They include a $55-million development program, a staff that would grow to 500 or 600 people in a few years, a full range of programs for the West Bank and Gaza Strip and signals that would carry into Jordan, Syria and Lebanon.

But Palestinian Broadcasting’s start, like that of the Palestinian Authority itself, has been far more tentative than assertive, bedeviled with the same problems--weak organization, no ready funds and factional in-fighting--that have hit virtually all the new Palestinian institutions.

“We are starting at zero--Palestinians have done nothing in this field by themselves--and we are pulling ourselves up hand over hand,” said Bassem abu Samaya. As the Jerusalem correspondent for Radio Monte Carlo, he is listened to throughout the Middle East and is now helping train a new generation of radio journalists. “We have no money--just promises. We have no studios, no equipment--just some for training. We are really at zero.”

Palestinian Broadcasting is still negotiating with Israel for television and radio frequencies and for permission to broadcast to the West Bank from the old Jordanian transmitter in Ramallah, north of Jerusalem. It is also rushing construction of its first studios with $3 million in donated equipment. The equipment now used in Jericho is all borrowed.

“The Ramallah transmitter is the big issue--once we get that, we’ll be on the air with three hours of (radio) transmission a day of news, current events, educational and social programs and music,” Khoury said. “Television is more complicated, unfortunately, and it may take two or three months.”

For Arafat’s arrival, for which no date has been set, the Palestinians have a tentative agreement for coverage with a French television company.

Political and philosophical issues that go beyond such start-up problems, however, also loom large.

In establishing the Palestinian Broadcasting Corp., Arafat made clear his preference for state-run radio and television, as in most other Mideast countries, and he has told Palestinian investors wanting to establish commercial stations that they would be given licenses--as long as the government holds 51% of the shares.

“We are willing to operate within national guidelines, but we should be allowed to operate commercially, investing our own money, taking the risks and keeping the profits,” said Hakam Fahoum, whose Jerusalem Media Productions has co-produced 47 documentaries over eight years.

“Commercial television and radio reinforce political pluralism. They will assure access to the media for a diversity of viewpoints, and they are far more likely to act as a watchdog on the government and undertake investigative reporting. Commercial media also reinforce a free-market economy. A state monopoly on the media is absolutely not the way to begin.”

Even Palestinian Broadcasting, though a government agency, hopes to establish its independence, deriving a substantial portion of its income from advertising.

But critics say many of the directors and staff being hired by Palestinian Broadcasting are, in fact, chosen for their political affiliation and their loyalty to Arafat rather than their professionalism, experience and skill.

“It’s all been political, not professional, from the top down and from the very start a year ago,” complained Daoud Kuttab, a prominent Palestinian journalist who organized some of the early training programs.

Scores of Palestinian broadcast journalists and technicians with experience in Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and other Gulf states were among the 1,800 who applied for jobs, but only a few have been hired so far.

“Television is one of the plums of the Palestinian autonomy,” said a Jerusalem businessman who is a potential investor, “and those who won control from Arafat are not going to give it up easily.”

The principal target for such criticism is Radwan abu Ayyash, the chairman of Palestinian Broadcasting, a journalist by profession but more a politician and an Arafat loyalist since he helped lead the intifada , the Palestinian rebellion against the Israeli occupation.

“Radwan thinks he has been appointed as Arafat’s commissar for radio and television rather than the chairman of a national institution responsible to the people,” another senior Palestinian journalist said.

Despite the early problems, there is excitement among the young radio journalists training under Abu Samaya in an apartment in East Jerusalem as they prepare to “put our Palestinian voice on the air.”

“We have to start strong,” Abu Samaya said. “We have to be better than other radio stations, or the listeners will not tune in. We have to have our own voice, our own style, not copy Jordan or Syria or even my station, Monte Carlo. Our people will judge us, and judge us severely.

“We are trying for professionalism. We don’t want slogans. If we do it all well, we will gain credibility, and Palestinians will listen to us. If we fail, they will just switch us off and listen to another station.”

Times staff writer Mark Fineman in Jerusalem contributed to this report.