...It is exactly four years since Al Jazeera began its broadcasts, and the Arab regimes still do not know how to cope with it. Al Jazeera is without doubt the preeminent satellite television station in the Arab world. It is estimated to have tens of millions of viewers, and many Arabs living in Europe and the United States call its live talk show every evening.

Al Jazeera began broadcasting in November 1996 as the first news station in the Arab world. According to its managers, the station received a grant of $150 million for five years from the Qatar government. With some 30 correspondents around the world, the station has consolidated its position as the most important provider of information to the Arab street. It is a model for emulation by other stations, such as one in Abu Dhabi, which went on the air about eight months ago. Al Jazeera's strength lies not in spectacular exclusives but in being the first to report breaking news, frequently accompanied by live broadcasts from the scene.

The station broadcasts 24 hours a day, with a brief newscast every hour, which usually includes three or four major stories. During the day, there are also more extensive newscasts and a comprehensive program of sports news. The station's announcers also read out the important headlines from papers in the Arab world and from the Western press, as well as some articles. This week, an article critical of Egypt that was published in London was read over the station. The next day the author of the article was savaged in the Egyptian press. Foreign news also gets wide coverage. During the morning, historical and other documentaries are broadcast, along with reruns of the previous night's discussions.

Every Monday evening, a religious program, "Sharia [Muslim religious court] and Life" is broadcast. Sheikh Yusuf Kardawi, a regular guest on the program, is a member of the Muslim Brotherhood who was expelled from Egypt and settled in Qatar. He addresses religious issues through the prism of current events. This week, for example, he explained why suicide attacks against Israelis are permitted. "It is known that the Israeli society is a military society," he said. "In other words, the entire society is trained so that every citizen is a soldier in the army, at a particular time or in the reserves. This is especially true of the settlers, all of whom are armed. Therefore, where there are suicide attacks, the perpetrators do not intend to kill women or children. They intend to kill the soldiers who are mobilized in the army, or in the reserves, at the time. And the Israelis, as we know, came to Israel from other countries. If they felt that life in Israel was not safe, they should think about going back to their countries."

However, the sensations are generated mainly by a weekly program called "The Opposite Direction," hosted by a Syrian citizen named Faisal al-Kassem, who brings together, in a live broadcast, two people who represent opposite views. As is the case with the other talk shows, many of the discussions deal with issues related to Israel and its place in the Middle East. Kassem, a former staffer for the BBC, was this week vilified in the Egyptian press by spokesmen for Mubarak. So furious is the Egyptian government at him that this week, a letter from his brother, Majd al-Kassem, was published in the London-based paper Al-Quds Al-Arabi, complaining that the Egyptian authorities refuse to permit him to enter the country.

Since its founding, the Qatari station has managed to become embroiled in disputes with Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Egypt, Tunisia and Libya. Last April, the Iraqi Information Ministry railed at the station for describing the celebrations of the birthday of Saddam Hussein as a "misrepresentation" in light of the "disastrous" situation within Iraq. However, Iraq needs Al Jazeera, which broadcasts to the world scenes of the Iraqi people suffering under the sanctions imposed by the United Nations. Speeches by Saddam Hussein, in which he appeals directly to Arab public opinion, are broadcast exclusively on Al Jazeera.

Similarly, Libyan ruler Muammar Gadhafi, who in the past recalled his ambassador to Qatar after the station gave a platform to an opponent of the regime, last month took advantage of Al Jazeera's access to the entire Arab world for his own needs. In a lengthy interview broadcast in prime time, Gadhafi leaked the contents of the resolutions that were about to be adopted by the Arab League summit meeting in Cairo. The next day, the president of Yemen, Ali Abdullah Salah, was interviewed on the same program and tried to incite the Arab masses to launch a holy war against Israel. Both interviews incensed Cairo, which was interested in a pragmatic, anti-war line.

In addition to being the first Arab station that is willing to give a platform to tough verbal attacks on Arab rulers, Al Jazeera is also the first Arab station willing to grant a platform to the Israeli position as well. Two weeks ago, for example, in an opinion program broadcast every Friday evening, Faisal Husseini, who holds the Jerusalem portfolio in the Palestinian Authority, and Abu Ali Mustafa, the head of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, confronted Yigal Carmon, the head of an institute that studies the Arab media and a former adviser to Israeli prime ministers Yitzhak Rabin and Yitzhak Shamir on counter-terrorism.

Carmon says his participation in the program "was the most wonderful experience of my life. I was given the opportunity to defend the justice of the Israeli position, in Arabic, before tens of millions of Arab viewers, while the other interviewees were not able to defend their position." In the discussion, Carmon said he was concerned that 35 percent of the Arab aid funds to the Palestinian Authority would be channeled into the private bank account of Yasser Arafat, on Hashmonaim Street in Tel Aviv. The anchor, Sami Hadad, asked if it was possible to get the account number.

So, even though the station's broadcasts in the past month have done an excellent service to the Palestinian cause, the Palestinian Authority is also critical of Al Jazeera. According to the station's correspondent in Ramallah, Walid al-Umari, "Arafat and the PA have complained against Al Jazeera more than once. But if you have good relations with the government, the conclusion is that there is something wrong with you. If we start thinking about how to satisfy a particular regime, we will stop being journalists." Al-Umari says that much of the influence exerted by Al Jazeera on the Arab street is due to its live broadcasts, such as Israel's bombing of Ramallah in the wake of the lynching of the two soldiers. "We do not incite and we do not heat up the atmosphere. But because we relay the pictures and the reports quickly and credibly, people are influenced. A person in Hebron can know within minutes if someone has been killed in Gaza, or if something is going on in his neighborhood. Live broadcasts definitely have an impact."

And the impact on the Arab street is powerful. Nearly all the viewers who call the station during live broadcasts praise its work. A viewer from Tunisia who called al-Kassem's program this week said that whereas during the Gulf War, the Arabs were forced to watch the "Zionist CNN station," information is now available to every Arab citizen. MK Azmi Bishara notes that "pan-Arabism never dreamed of conditions like this, in which the whole Arab world has broadcasts that are received simultaneously in every country in literary Arabic." According to Bishara, Al Jazeera has restored the credibility of the Arab media in the eyes of the Arab public for the first time since it was vitiated in the 1967 war.

Nor is Bishara the only one who takes this view. The Jordanian daily Al-Arab al-Yum this week published an article lauding the station, declaring, "The official Arab news journals lost their credibility long ago. They have lost their credibility since the period in which they transformed military defeats into victories… However, Al Jazeera has proved that this is not what the public wants. But you [referring to the Arab regimes] want to maintain the public's ignorance and divert it from what is important. You are the ones who are fearful to the point of panic, even in the face of one station that tells the public the truth, the truth you tried to hide from it for decades."

Still, over the past month, this pan-Arab satellite umbrella apparently frightened a few Arab rulers, who were afraid that tens of thousands of their citizens may have been overly enflamed by the readily available pictures from the Israeli-Palestinian arena. On Wednesday, Jordan was again compelled to send a warning message to the public against attempts to undermine the internal stability in the kingdom.

Egyptian television, meanwhile, found itself in a trap. On the one hand, Mubarak was trying to reduce the tension in the region, while at the same time Egyptian television broadcast ― as it did during the Sharm al-Sheikh conference ― propaganda clips similar to those seen on Syrian and Palestinian television. This week, Al Jazeera devoted one of its talk shows to complaints that the satellite stations had brought the battle from Israel's court straight into the private courtyards of the Arab rulers.