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Gaza City: It was the name of the bus company chosen by Hamas to drive foreign guests around Gaza on Monday that said it all. The name was Sweety Tours.
The tour was meant to counter weeks of adverse publicity about the supposedly draconian nature of 'Hamastan' - the name given to the Gaza Strip by critics of the Islamist movement since its violent takeover last month.
So for five sweaty hours, the coach from Sweety Tours took a few dozen reporters on a tour of the Gaza Strip to try to counter this image. The bus stopped at the presidential guest house - Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian National Authority and Fatah leader is locked out of Gaza - to show that the gardens were being watered and the building maintained.
A great deal was made of the fact that the portrait of Abbas still hung in the main reception room. But then a few minutes later the bus passed a vast mural of Yasser Arafat, the former Fatah leader. The mural was pockmarked with fresh-looking bullet holes.
"We believe in freedom of speech and democracy," said Ahmad Bahar, the deputy speaker of the Palestinian parliament and a senior Hamas figure.
His words would have sounded more convincing had the Hamas authorities in Gaza not chosen to arrest several distributors of Palestinian newspapers from the West Bank.
The bus continued to the main prison, the Serai, where the cell doors were thrown open to provide access to the inmates. They all dutifully provided glowing accounts of how the administration had improved since Hamas took over.
The coach party was then taken to the main church of 204-strong Catholic community to hear a glowing account of co-existence from the priest, Father Emmanuel Musallam.
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