From April 7th no broadcasts originated from Jerusalem anymore. Anybody who could, went to our Ramallah studios to broadcast. Whilst we were in house arrest and the week after that, The Afternoon Show was not broadcast. Martin Bee went to Ramallah each morning to do his show, Raf Gangat (Morning Show) and Kevin Lee (Drive) were already in Ramallah.
When we were allowed to return to work, my co-host Arda went to Ramallah everyday to present the Afternoon Show. I went to our Jerusalem office to "produce" the show, and come up with new ideas. I used to come on air through the telephone once or twice during the programme, but after the line was so bad, after a week or so, this was dropped.
So there I was, along with two new members of the news team (Ami and Heather) alone in Jerusalem. RAM FM was more or lessed based in Ramallah from now on. People did come to visit every now and again, but more or less we were alone. I no longer felt part of the station I had been with since its inception.
There was not much anyone could do as far as I was concerned. I am Israeli, I could not go to Ramallah to present the show. Arda was now presenting the show alone, and when it became clear that Jerusalem was not going to open again, my name was taken out of the programmes ID's - that hurt!
After a couple of months we were told that the main offices and studios in Jerusalem were going to be closed altogether, and we were to move into a room in the office next door to us. This also didn't happen, and in the middle of July we were told that with great sorrow, we were being let go. That was it, 18 months was now coming to an end.
During those remaining weeks, all the RAM FM staff were resigned (sorry for the pun!) to the fact that the station was to close, and people started looking for alternatives. The date we were giving was somewhere between September and December 2008, so I was quite surprised when a listener called me on August 8th saying that the station was to close down the same day - we the staff were not even told of the decision! I knew there had been a Board Meeting a day or two before, and we knew it was something serious, but we didn't think the station would close so fast. So fast that even Martin didn't get a chance to say goodbye to his listeners. There were no goodbyes from any of the RAM FM presenters, and only a short announcement repeated throughout the day by Raf Gangat.
At 7pm another short announcement was made by Raf, and 18 months of a wonderful idea, and hundreds of thousands of faithful listeners went down the drain.
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