More on the PA's closing of the West Bank Al Jazeera office. From Marc Lynch:

The PA decision is more troubling than the run of the mill story of Arab regimes hating free media, though, because it comes at a time when the contours of an emerging Palestinian state are being shaped. Salam al-Fayyad's role in the crackdown is particularly disturbing, given the great hopes which the U.S. has placed on him personally. The reflexive hostility to a free media shows yet again why the Palestinian Authority in its current configuration is a poor foundation for building a viable Palestinian state and the need for major political and institutional reforms. What does it say for the hope of building a political system on the basis of the rule of law and political freedoms when its U.S.-backed leadership cavalierly closes down media outlets it doesn't like?

And from Brian Whitaker writing in the Guardian:

The Palestinian information ministry adopted the usual line yesterday when it said the ban on al-Jazeera was intended to protect "Palestinian interests", ie those of the Fatah establishment.

In the days when there was only print and terrestrial TV, this idea that the media should be harnessed in the service of "the nation" (as defined by those in power) was fairly easy to maintain. "Licensing" of non-government newspapers and the general culture of deference kept a lid on things within the country, while "undesirable" material from outside could be stopped at the borders.

That began to break down with the arrival of new media that recognised no national boundaries: first satellite television – al-Jazeera, the most popular Arabic channel, started up in 1996 – and then the internet. Old attitudes persist, though. In Jordan, for instance, the main front-page "news" every single day is what the king did yesterday.