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The battle of words and images was triggered by a series of slick videos posted on YouTube representing Hamas’s pitch for the municipal elections - not least in Gaza Metropolis, one of the three most important and populous Palestinian cities. The message, after years emphasising Israeli occupation, siege and resistance, is relentlessly upbeat, that includes two key phrases which have additionally been deployed as hashtags on Twitter and Fb: “Thank you, Hamas” and “Gaza is more beautiful”. The web battle has continued as the Israeli army - on Sunday and in a single day on Monday - launched some 50 strikes in opposition to targets in Gaza.
The attacks by jets and Israeli tanks were in response to a missile, claimed by a jihadist group, that hit the close by Israeli group of Sderot. The Hamas movies, that includes drone pictures, pop music and stylised production, depict a Gaza at odds with the grinding reality of high unemployment, frequent energy cuts and warfare-damaged buildings.
As a substitute, the scenes flit from the new sea-side corniche to artfully-lit workplace blocks and an amusement park opened by Hamas, to universities, municipal labourers laborious at work and lifeguards on the beaches. In the Fatah model - utilizing the identical hashtag “thank you Hamas” but this time ironically - Israeli bombs are depicted exploding over the rooftops.
Neighbourhoods heavily broken within the last battle in 2014, corresponding to Shuja’iya, are shown as a gray patchwork of rubble. Hamas police are seen beating women on the road or fighting Salafists in a Rafah mosque. Most horrifying of all is the inclusion of shots of useless Palestinian children from latest conflicts. It has not solely been the rival videos that have been struggling for attention but related hashtags too, usually mirroring each others’ messages: Hamas asserting it is “ready to rule” with Fatah saying it is “able to rule”. The original hashtags are already changing into the punchline for jokes amongst opponents of Hamas, while a shot-by-shot deconstruction of Hamas’s first video has been broadly shared on Facebook.
What seems sure is that the battle seems likely to intensify as each sides practice up social media activists to struggle their nook. A sense of the campaigns’ surreal strangeness is underlined by the fact that Khaled Safi, a Hamas-supporting social media guide, says he has suggested both Hamas and Fatah activists.
“Officials recognise that these elections can be the primary Palestinian elections fought on social media,” he instructed the Guardian. The future of Gaza: from metropolis beneath siege to world tourism hub? Safi says the aggressiveness of the rival social media campaigns displays the polarisation of Palestinian society, a divide he expects to be exacerbated further.
“Palestinian society is filled with polarised ideologies. ] elections in 2006 when the events tried to persuade rivals and those who have been impartial to vote for them, these elections are about persauding their own core base to vote. “There is lack of confidence inside the parties themselves, whether it's Fatah or Hamas. It's about persuading voters to vote for them once more. “With the extent of misery we are residing with, I actually really feel social media is a magic answer. Safi sees the Hamas marketing campaign - for all its positive spin - as essentially oppositional, forcing Fatah to reply.
What can't be disputed is that Hamas’s supporters, even forward of the official start of campaigning, weren't solely ahead of the curve however far glitzier as properly. “Hamas,” says Safi, “takes the opportunity to try new techniques all the time. “People are making jokes about it. I met in the present day with one of many Hamas leaders and he mentioned that there's a variety of criticism of it in Hamas - that they may steadily disappear.
And among those that both Hamas and Fatah are attempting to convince - Gaza’s new technology of Palestinian voters - there is deep scepticism aimed toward each sides. Farah Bakr, 18, will be capable of vote if the elections happen in October. A blogger who built a huge following during the 2014 conflict, she won’t be voting for either celebration. “I see most Palestinians in Gaza being in opposition to both Fatah and Hamas. After every part we’ve lived through, all of the wars, I believe all these videos are such a lie. We reside in Gaza.