More than a dozen flights from Ben Gurion International Airport were canceled Wednesday due to radio interference, allegedly from a Ramallah-based pirate radio station.



Airport Air Traffic Communications Director Uri Orlev told Army Radio that Wednesday’s communication crisis was caused by a combination of weather and hardware.



“The high temperatures play a critical part in the disruptions,” he said. “When they heat up the low-quality transmitters used by pirate radio stations, they stray into higher frequencies and interfere with communications. The controller wants to give a message to the pilot – and the message is interrupted. This is why we don’t want to take any chances and why we stopped flights Wednesday.”



Orlev said that there are sometimes problems with regular radio stations as well – but “the main problem is the pirate radio stations.” 



The are 200 unauthorized radio stations operated by Israelis, mostly run by the Shas Party and other hareidi-religious communities.  The specific frequency interfering with the air traffic transmissions Wednesday, according to Army Radio, is actually Ramallah’s 107.7 FM Saut al-Shaab radio.

Others have accused the government of agreeing not to interfere with Shas stations as part of the price of Shas's membership in the government coalition. Shas Minister Ariel Attias oversees the Ministry of Communications.



Strike Called, Called Off

The Air Traffic Controllers at Ben Gurion Airport announced that they would strike Thursday, but canceled it after Transportation Minister Sha’ul Mofaz promised to act against pirate radio broadcasts.



“The government is obligated to deal harshly with the pirate radio stations,” Mofaz said. “They are endangering millions of travelers.” He said that one of the possibilities considered would be the fining of companies that advertise on the dozens of pirate stations in Israel. Mofaz did not explain what the government would do to combat the Palestinian Authority-based stations that interfered with air traffic transmissions Wednesday.



Pirate radio broadcasters complain that the government refuses to grant broadcast licenses to stations offering an alternative voice to state-run radio. When Arutz-7 was on the air, it used transmitters that would not stray into air traffic frequencies, no matter what the weather – yet air traffic interference was often a reason cited during government attempts to shut it down.



In the context of the 1993 Oslo Accords, Israel gave several radio frequencies to the PA. PA Arabs have not adhered to those frequencies, however, and are operating an unknown number of makeshift pirate radio stations, sponsored by competing mosques and terror groups. The Hamas-Fatah PA government has refused to take action against the Ramallah radio station, and communications disruptions continued Thursday morning.

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