Young Palestinian artist Mohammed Assaf has unexpectedly captured the attention of Palestinians across all their different geographical regions, both at home and abroad, in refugee camps, in all their different political and intellectual tendencies — both secularists and Islamists —regardless of their financial situations.
This is what drove Palestinians to generate, as reported by Palestinian cellular communications company Jawwal, more than 1.4 million messages since the beginning of this season of "Arab Idol." This comes out to 250,000 shekels ($680,000) in a country where the average annual income is close to 2,000 shekels ($600).