GAZA, Feb. 23 (Xinhua) -- Ruba Atallah and Rewa Mershed wore their Palestinian traditional dresses and sat in a television studio preparing to present a show for the first time in their life in a new channel for women that was inaugurated in Gaza this week.
The two young women seemed worried and exited when the director started to count from five to zero to start the first show.
The show is to bring guests to the studio and holding conversation with them focusing on the role of Palestinian women and how the channel is important for them to send their clear message to the world.
The first guest was Meryam Abu Dagga, a woman from Gaza, and an activist in feminine movements.
She was relaxed because it is not her first time on television, and the two women felt relaxed when the 15-minute show finished without any mistake.
When cameras turned off, cheers and applause dominated the studio.
"I don't think there is anything much better than having women from Gaza, who work at and run a special channel for women, especially in Gaza. Women are the ones who suffer from many things and they are the ones who can talk about their life, their concerns and their suffering," said Mershed.
Her colleague Atallah also said "when they told me that they want me to work for the channel, I like the idea very much because it is special and unique," she said.
She added that "I hope that throughout working in this special channel for women, I will be able to change our realities to the better and bring equality between men and women."
The studio of the new channel is in an apartment on the 16th floor in a 17-floor high-rise building close to Gaza seaside in western Gaza city.
The studio is part of a local Gaza visual and multimedia production company called Color Bars, that provides visual logistics and services to television channels.
The women channel is called "Tayyf" or Spectrum for Palestinian Woman.
It is not a traditional satellite television channel, it's a digital channel that went online this week on social media, according to Mona Oukal, director general of the channel, who used to work as an anchor in the official Palestine Satellite television.
"Tayyf channel is the first of its kind that was inaugurated this week to be a first example among all Palestinian media organizations that airs on the internet and the social media," said Oukal.
She was so much anxious to see the two young women presenting their first show after being trained for more than two months.
Oukal, the executive director of Color Bars Ahmad Harb, said that all the volunteering women and technicians as well as several guests of writers and journalists were banned by the Hamas-run government press office to launch an opening ceremony and announce the inauguration of the new women channel "Tayyf."
As all were ready for the opening ceremony, Harb and Oukal received a phone call from an official in the government press office that they are banned from carrying on the celebration because they haven't applied for a permission to hold the celebration and that the needed official licences for opening the channel are not ready yet.
"I believe this is not true, we applied to the interior office and the government press office a long time ago for getting a licence for opening the channel," said Harb, adding that "they informed us at the last moment that we are not allowed to do the opening ceremony is an outcome of more than ten years of an internal division."
Islamic Hamas movement, which has violently seized control of the Gaza Strip in 2007, still controls interior security in the coastal enclave, although it had reached a reconciliation agreement in Cairo in October to hand over power to the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) consensus government of Rami Hamdallah.
Although the Hamas-run press office banned the channel crews and guests from celebrating the opening of the channel, they insisted to start and at the same time they went online this week.
"The legal issues and getting the needed permissions and licenses are on the way and we will carry on, nothing will stop us," said Oukal.
