Gaza Radio Station Returns to The Airwaves

CrossFireArabia
Culture
February 13, 2026

Broadcaster Rami Al-Sharafi works on a laptop inside the damaged Zaman FM radio station building in Gaza, marking what may seem an unlikely return to the airwaves amid the rubble of the deadly two-year Israel-Hamas war.

While 23 local radio stations were operating in Gaza before the conflict erupted, they were all destroyed and ceased broadcasting, he told UN News.

“Today, we are the only radio station broadcasting on FM from within Gaza after this widespread destruction,” he said. “We hope that other local radio stations will resume broadcasting, thus allowing competition in providing media services to the people of the Gaza Strip.”

Ahead of World Radio Day, observed on 13 February, the resumption of broadcasting comes at a time when Gaza’s media infrastructure still faces significant challenges amid local and international calls to support journalism as part of broader recovery and reconstruction efforts in the sector.

A journalist works at a desk in a damaged office in Gaza, viewed through broken pillars. Another person uses a laptop in the background.

UN News

A journalist works in the damaged office of Zaman 90.60 FM radio station in Gaza City.

Digging through the rubble

After a hiatus of nearly two years due to the war, some local radio stations in the Gaza Strip are transmitting again, in a move showing gradual efforts to revive the media landscape in the war-ravaged Strip – much of which has suffered widespread destruction of infrastructure and civilian institutions from Israeli attacks.

Zaman FM operates in the Tel al-Hawa neighbourhood of Gaza City, where Israeli attacks triggered a famine and left mountains of debris in the streets.

The cracked walls of the station’s building tell a story of immense destruction and the scene inside is unlike any other radio studio in the world.

Employees dig through the rubble to keep the station broadcasting, working with minimal technical resources while behind them, awareness posters warn people of the dangers of dilapidated buildings.

On-air messages of hope

Local radio remains vital in Gaza as humanitarian crises persist, power outages continue and access to other media remains limited. This makes radio one of the most effective ways of getting key messages out to the public, along with health guidance and information about other services.

Gaza is in dire need of professional local radio stations capable of broadcasting awareness messages and guidance bulletins in light of the spread of diseases, the deterioration of the education system and the disruption of many basic services, said Mr. Al-Sharafi, director of the radio station and host of the morning programme, An Hour of Time.

“We need to deliver information to the population and guide them to the services that have stopped and are gradually being resumed,” he said, “especially in light of the difficult health conditions and the spread of epidemics.”

Amid the destruction all around, Mr. Al-Sharafi sits behind his dust-covered microphone and does just that.

He sends morning greetings to Gaza residents and provides them with important information and updates, bringing some much-needed hope to the airwaves across a devastated landscape that has only just begun to recover – UN News

CrossFireArabia

Dr. Marwan Asmar holds a PhD from Leeds University and is a freelance writer specializing on the Middle East. He has worked as a journalist since the early 1990s in Jordan and the Gulf countries, and been widely published, including at Albawaba, Gulf News, Al Ghad, World Press Review and others.

Culture

Beirut Weeps For a Poet

CrossFireArabia
April 16, 2026

Lebanon mourns Khatoun Salma, a Lebanese national poet who was killed along with her husband in an Israeli airstrike that targeted their home in the Tallet al-Khayat neighborhood of Beirut Wednesday, 8 April.

Rasha al-Amir, publisher of Dar al-Jadeed, announced that the bodies of Khatoun and her husband were recovered from the rubble, Thursday morning.

Lebanese journalist Maha Salma also mourned her sister Khatoun on her Instagram account, writing: “My dear sister is in God’s care. May God grant me patience in the pain of her loss and the burning of my heart and soul.”

Poet and playwright Yahya Jaber wrote a tribute to Khatoun on Facebook, saying: “Yesterday, the Israeli airstrike cut down a poet with its sharp scissors, a poet of delicate Arabic.” Under the rubble, the conjunction “waw,” the plural “waw,” the feminine plural “nun,” the feminine suffix “ta,” the definite article “al-“: a massacre of language at the hands of language. Jaber attached a picture of the building where Khatoun lived to his post, saying:

“Here is the Khayat Hill building, and here on one of these balconies, we used to stay up late with Khatoun and her husband, Muhammad Karsht, in the late 198s, spinning yarns of laughter and sewing memories. We would recite poetry and remember our city, Tyre, and love Beirut, the capital.”

Lebanese poet Majida Dagher wrote on her Facebook page in mourning for Khatoun: “Under the rubble of her house in Khayat Hill, they found a poet lying among her shattered rhymes. The death of a poet in an airstrike on Beirut makes you feel that war is very, very close. The sound of bones breaking has become louder, and the smell of blood deeper.

Salma fell from the heights of poetry before she could bid farewell to ‘the last inhabitant of the moon.'” She thought Beirut was her tent, Beirut the roof of her poem, where she would hide, “embracing a woman waiting” for the dust to settle. But the dust became the tent of a new Beirut, a Beirut weeping, broken, martyred.

Salma, who studied Arabic literature at the American University of Beirut, published two collections of poetry, “I Embraced a Woman Waiting” in 2009 and “The Last Inhabitants of the Moon” in 2012, both with the Lebanese publishing house Dar Al-Jadeed. She first gained recognition in the 1970s, during her secondary school years, when she won a poetry prize. Later, at the beginning of this century, she became known in cultural circles for her relatively small but distinguished poetic output and her academic pursuits, which included studies in Sufism and Sufi mystics.

She combined profound knowledge with poetic sensitivity. She left her mark on the Lebanese cultural scene with a unique poetic voice, manifested in her literary works that carried the pain of humanity, exile, and memory. With her tragic passing, Lebanon loses a literary and human figure who wrote of the wound in a language that resembled nothing but truth.

Culture

Al Bahri: The Man Who Set Palestinian Theater

CrossFireArabia
March 14, 2026

He is a playwright and author of 12 plays, nearly 20 novels, and numerous translations. Jamil Habib Afara (al-Bahri) was known as the “Father of Theater.” He was born in 1895 in Haifa and his family name dates back to the mid-18th century, as his ancestor owned a merchant fleet that sailed the Mediterranean between Haifa, Acre, and Tripoli. This is where his family name originated.

He showed early interest in literature and writing. He and his brother, Hanna, were keen to revitalize the literary and intellectual scene in Haifa, establishing the National Library there in 1922. He first published the “Zahrat al-Jamil” (The Beautiful Flower) and later “al-Zahra” (The Flower) which was initially a weekly publication that later became a bi-weekly and continued publication for about nine months after his death in 1931. His last piece was

a journalistic investigation into the execution of the three martyrs: Muhammad Jamjoum, Fuad Hijazi, and Ata al-Zeer, in the city of Acre in 1930. He dedicated his time and his newspaper that day to the souls of these martyrs, leading with: “The terrible hour in Haifa and all of Palestine: Let us commemorate those who gave their lives for the homeland.” A large funeral was held for him, and poems and eulogies were recited and published in the Palestinian press, such as the “Al-Karmel” and “Falastin,” newspapers.

The Department of Culture of the Palestine Liberation Organization posthumously awarded him the Jerusalem Medal for Culture and Arts in 1990, and the Palestinian Ministry of Culture reprinted his first book, “The History of Haifa,” in 2022.

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Gaza Radio Station Returns to The Airwaves

Digging through the rubble

On-air messages of hope

CrossFireArabia

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