Region

VIENNA — US Secretary of State John Kerry said on Sunday major differences persist between Iran and six world powers negotiating on Tehran’s nuclear programme, with a week to go before a deadline for a deal.

The United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China want Iran to reduce its nuclear fuel-making capacity to deny it any means of quickly producing atom bombs. In exchange, international sanctions that have crippled the large OPEC member’s oil-dependent economy would gradually be lifted.

Iran says it is enriching uranium for peaceful energy purposes only and wants the sanctions removed swiftly. But a history of hiding sensitive nuclear work from UN inspectors raised international suspicions and the risk of a new Middle East war if diplomacy fails to yield a long-term settlement.

“Obviously we have some very significant gaps still, so we need to see if we can make some progress,” Kerry said ahead of meetings with foreign ministers who flew into the Austrian capital at the weekend to breathe new life into the talks.

Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi delivered a similar message. He was quoted by Iran’s Arabic language Al Alam television as saying that “disputes over all major and important issues still remain. We have not been able to narrow the gaps on major issues and it is not clear whether we can do it”.

Kerry arrived in Vienna in the early hours after clinching a deal in Kabul with Afghanistan’s presidential candidates to end the country’s election crisis.

“It is vital to make certain that Iran is not going to develop a nuclear weapon and that their programme is peaceful and that’s what we’re here to try and achieve and I hope we can make some progress,” Kerry said in Vienna.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier told reporters that Germany and the other members of the six-power group have tried to persuade Iran of the urgency of a deal.

“This may be the last chance for a long time to peacefully resolve the dispute over Iran’s nuclear programme,” he told reporters. “It’s now up to Iran to decide whether it wants cooperation with the international community or to remain in isolation. ... The ball is in Iran’s court.”

British Foreign Secretary William Hague said it was crucial for Tehran “to be more realistic about what is necessary” to reach a nuclear deal, adding that no breakthroughs had been achieved and there was “no major change in the state of play in these negotiations as of this moment”.

Kerry also met Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, though no readout was immediately available. On Saturday, a senior US official said Iran was sticking to “unworkable and inadequate” positions.

Another of Kerry’s meetings on Sunday was with Germany’s Steinmeier, who raised new accusations of US spying on Berlin.

Steinmeier told reporters that in the meeting with Kerry he called for “reviving this (US-German) relationship, on a foundation of trust and mutual respect”. Kerry referred to the United States and Germany as “great friends”.

Germany asked the CIA station chief in Berlin last week to leave the country following fresh charges of US spying on Berlin. Kerry and Steinmeier were expected to hold a joint news conference later on Sunday.

Kerry, Steinmeier and their British and French counterparts also discussed the escalation of hostilities between Israel and Palestinian fighters in the Gaza Strip.

Araqchi said that he was “not pessimistic but also not very optimistic” about the chances for an agreement with the sextet ahead of the self-imposed deadline of July 20. “No proposal has been accepted yet. We have not reached any agreement over the enrichment [programme of Iran] and its capacity.”

He added that if the talks collapsed, Iran would resume higher-level enrichment that it suspended on January 20 when a preliminary accord the sides struck two months before took effect. Iran won limited relief from sanctions in return.

The November 24 deal included a provision for lengthening talks on a permanent agreement by up to six months if all sides agree. Araqchi said “there is a possibility of extending the talks for a few days or a few weeks if progress is made”.

A senior US official said on Saturday that an extension would be difficult to consider without first seeing “significant progress on key issues”.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius also raised the possibility of extending the talks.

“If we can reach a deal by July 20, bravo, if it’s serious,” he told reporters. “If we can’t, there are two possibilities. One, we either extend... or we will have to say that unfortunately there is no prospect for a deal.”

Failure to seal a deal would mean the limited sanctions relief currently in place for Iran would end and Tehran could expect tougher sanctions, above all from the United States.

Iran says it is refining uranium to low levels of fissile purity to fuel a planned network of nuclear power stations. It earlier described its higher level — or 20 per cent purity — enrichment as material to fuel a medical research reactor. High-enriched uranium — or 90 per cent — is for nuclear weapons.

The Russian and Chinese foreign ministers were not in Vienna on Sunday due to a meeting in Brazil of the BRICS developing countries. Moscow and Beijing sent senior diplomats to Vienna instead.

PARIS — Clashes erupted in Paris on Sunday as thousands of people protested against Israel and in support of residents in the Gaza Strip, where a six-day conflict has left 166 Palestinians dead.

Several thousand demonstrators walked calmly through the streets of Paris behind a large banner that read “Total Support for the Struggle of the Palestinian People”.

But clashes erupted at the end of the march on Bastille Square, with people throwing projectiles onto a cordon of police who responded with tear gas. The unrest was continuing early Sunday evening.

In the northern city of Lille, meanwhile, between 2,300 and 6,000 people protested peacefully, according to differing figures provided by the police and organisers.

The descent into violence in the Gaza Strip began on June 12 when three settler teenagers were kidnapped and later murdered, triggering a major military crackdown on Hamas in the West Bank and an escalation of rocket fire from Gaza.

The brutal revenge killing of a Palestinian teenager by Jewish extremists on July 2 added further fuel to the fire, turning into an all-out conflict on July 8 when Israel launched an air campaign against Gaza fighters.

The Palestinian death toll from Israel’s punishing air campaign has hit 166.

“I came to say no to this massacre,” Amid Hamadouch, 30, told AFP at the Paris protest while it was still peaceful, with a sticker reading “Boycott Israel, Racist State” on his jacket.

“They are bombing innocent people. There are missiles being launched by Hamas, but the Israeli response is disproportionate. They are attacking the civilian population and not Hamas officials.”

The crowd, very young, shouted slogans such as: “We Are All Palestinians!” and “Only One Solution, End the Occupation!”.

According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, a majority of those killed in Gaza so far — 70 per cent — have been civilians, of whom 30 per cent were children.

GAZA — Hamas fighters warned Israel for the first time, and in Hebrew, of an impending rocket attack, adopting psychological warfare with Israel while trying to raise the morale of Gaza’s Palestinians harder hit by Israeli bombardment.

More than 160 Palestinians in the tiny overcrowded enclave, most of them civilians, have been killed in six days of conflict while Israel has reported no dead, prompting Gaza’s Islamist rulers to resort to innovative publicity tactics.

Hamas’ domestic standing has taken a beating in peacetime as poverty and hunger have worsened in the Gaza Strip, worsened by an Israeli-Egyptian blockade and the demolition of border smuggling tunnels that were the lifeblood of its economy.

Now, by burnishing its accomplishments in its latest bloody showdown with Israel, Hamas has recalled its pre-2007 days as a faction under fire, and not the political custodian of one of the most troubled, densely-populated tracts on earth.

On Hamas’ Al Aqsa TV at eight in the evening Saturday, the voice of Abu Ubeida — the perpetually masked and camouflaged spokesman of the group’s armed wing — broadcast a warning.

“[We] will direct a military strike with rockets at the Tel Aviv area and its surroundings with a J80 rocket after 9pm.”

Audio of the threat in Hebrew followed, and Israeli television stations immediately picked up the news.

At seven minutes past nine, a series of thunderous roars in the coastal territory signalled the outgoing rockets. Warning sirens promptly sounded in the greater Tel Aviv region, the heavily populated heart of Israel.

“Our rockets have struck Tel Aviv!” the loudspeaker of a Gaza mosque blared. The roars of men and boys arose from the windows of houses: “God is Great!”

No rocket actually hit Tel Aviv. They were either shot down by Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile interceptor or fell harmlessly on open ground. But that did not matter in Gaza.

Its inhabitants mostly rely for news on Hamas-controlled radio, TV and text messages, which hail rocket attacks on the “Zionist entity” and praise as martyrs the more than 160 Palestinians killed since the six-day-old Israeli offensive began.

That no one in Israel has been killed in the attacks has been dismissed as a lie by Hamas-run media, and the Palestinian public appears to agree.

“When we heard the threat last night, we were overjoyed. It’s excellent,” said Muhammad Abu Asi, 19, who says he and his family rely solely on Al Aqsa for updates during the war.

“The resistance is striking more painful blows than ever before... [Israel] lies to cover their losses, because they know that would be a victory for us. We’re sure we’ll win.”

Hamas and many residents say telephoned Israeli warnings of impending air strikes on houses, many of which it has not acted upon for days, is part of its own campaign to demoralize Gaza.

The Gaza interior ministry on Sunday dismissed as “psychological warfare” Israeli leaflets dropped in border areas urging people to evacuate ahead of a possible ground invasion. 

Beachfront Tel Aviv, house-bound Gaza 

But Hamas’ rhetoric appeared more to entertain than frighten Israelis, even as warning sirens beckoned its hundreds of thousands of residents to immediately take cover in shelters.

Israeli television stations broadcast live images of the Tel Aviv skyline on Saturday and showed the promised rockets blown up in midair by the military’s Iron Dome umbrella.

Beachfront cafés in Israel’s commercial capital erupted with cheers at the images. At a concert by the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, an announcement just before the start of the show told people to wait in their seats until the sirens ended.

Then the music began.

But Israelis were disappointed by the cancellation of a Neil Young concert on Thursday in Tel Aviv because of the rockets.

Gaza families, on the other hand, are mostly house-bound for fear of the Israeli bombs. They tune in for hours to local TV’s pulse-quickening coverage, blending the gory aftermath of Israeli air strikes with bulletins of triumphs in battle.

It broadcast wrenching footage of a slain four-year old’s father shaking his lifeless little body, crying, “My son, wake up! I’ve bought you a toy!”

Later a flash appears: “Rockets of the resistance strike Ashkelon,” a city in southern Israel, and martial songs play. The Iron Dome interceptions are almost never mentioned.

Hamas media generally spurned any communications with Israel and avoided conveying its reactions to violent events in the Gaza Strip during previous small wars in 2008-9 and 2012.

Saturday’s rocket warning did bring about a rare but fruitless exchange between the purveyors of news on the two sides. Israel’s Channel 2 and Hamas’ Al Aqsa carried live feeds of each other’s broadcasts, the first to publish the warning, the latter to view the reaction.

“Can we talk?” the Israeli anchor asked his counterpart.

“We’ll continue to broadcast Palestinian strength. There can be no dialogue between Palestinians and the Zionist occupation,” the Palestinian anchor sniped back through a translator.

GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories — In 2012, Mohamed Abu Aisha took part in a US peace camp with Israelis, but now he wonders if some of them are flying the warplanes overhead in Gaza.

Standing in the Tuffah neighbourhood in eastern Gaza City, the 17-year-old stares at the devastation left by an Israeli strike in which 18 people were killed on Saturday night.

The target appears to have been a Hamas police chief, but the missile killed a significant number of his extended family, with two rockets slamming into the home of a cousin he was visiting shortly after Ramadan prayers.

“It is a disaster,” says Abu Aisha, who lives two streets away.

“The blast was so big that our house shook. All the dust and debris came in through our windows — we can’t close them because otherwise they shatter when there are air strikes.”

Abu Aisha just graduated from Gaza’s American International School and is eager to show off his fluent English.

He honed his language skills during two months in the United States in 2012, when he took part in a peace maker’s programme with Israelis and others living in conflict zones, called Seeds of Peace.

“It’s a programme that brings people living in conflict together and allows them to talk to each other,” he says.

It was the first time he had talked at length to Israelis, and he formed cautious acquaintances with some, as he tried to explain things from the Palestinian point of view.

He stayed in touch with them, but recently discovered that some have begun their mandatory military service.

“These people are in the army, maybe some are in the air force,” he says.

“I look around and I wonder if the people I met are now the ones that are bombing us.”

A step too far  

Since the Israeli air strikes began on Tuesday, Abu Aisha has stopped contacting the Israelis he met.

And he sighs in frustration when he talks about those who are now in the military.

“I am disappointed in them. I expected and I hoped that they might refuse to enter the army, but now they are part of that criminal force,” he says.

All around him is the detritus of the family killed in Saturday’s strike, one of more than 1,300 Israeli raids that have killed 166 people in just six days.

The blast levelled the building and sheared the facade off a neighbouring structure, exposing a kitchen and a fridge with its door ripped off, full of food and drink.

A nearby UN school also scars from the strike — all the windows blown out and a large hole blasted through its outside wall.

On the ground are children’s notebooks, a woman’s high-heeled shoe, a purple nightgown, even an X-ray.

On a nearby piece of land, 17 graves have been dug to receive some of those killed in the blast.

A photo of the family patriarch Majed Al Batsh lies on a yellow blanket covering some of his body parts, as well as parts belonging to other family members.

The dead are buried in chaos, with mourners crowding around the row of graves.

One body is lowered in, then removed, rotated, and lowered in again to ensure it is facing the right direction.

‘I want to help’  

Standing near the remains of one of the rockets that hit the Batsh house, Abu Aisha says he is hoping to become a doctor.

He has finished high school and now hopes to travel to Turkey to study medicine.

“The level of medicine here and the medical knowledge is so low,” he says.

“So I want to study it so I can help my country.”

With the prospect of peace looking increasingly like a pipedream, Abu Aisha can imagine himself one day working in Gaza City’s Shifa hospital, treating those hurt in future conflicts.

“I expect the coming decades will be full of wars here, so we will need people who can help people,” he told AFP.

“That is what I want to do.”

BAGHDAD — Iraq is airlifting some 4,000 volunteers to an embattled city west of Baghdad to help bolster government forces locked in a running battle with Sunni militants there, authorities said Saturday.

Around 2,500 of the volunteers arrived in Ramadi, located 115 kilometres west of the capital on Friday and are to be joined by the remaining 1,500 on Saturday, said Gen. Rasheed Flayeh, the commander of operations in Anbar province. The men are being ferried out to Ramadi from Baghdad by helicopter, he added.

The vast majority of volunteers are Shiites who have answered a call from the country’s top Shiite cleric, Ayatollah Ali Al Sistani, to defend Iraq from the militants who have overrun much of the country’s north and west over the past month. The Sunni militant blitz is led by the Islamic State extremist group, which has unilaterally declared the establishment of an Islamic state ruled by Shariah law in the territory it controls straddling the Iraq-Syria border.

The government’s reliance on Shiite militias to help counter the threat from Sunni militants has contributed to fears that Iraq could return to the wholesale sectarian bloodletting that engulfed the country in 2006 and 2007.

There are already worrying signs of such violence.

Human Rights Watch said Friday that Iraqi security forces and government-affiliated militias appear to have killed at least 255 prisoners in six cities and villages since June 9. It said five of the mass killings took place when security forces were fleeing as militants advanced and that the vast majorty the prisoners killed were Sunni.

Most members of the security forces and militias are Shiite. The six incidents appear to be aimed at avenging the deaths of Shiites captured and killed by the Islamic State group, Human Rights Watch said.

There is also evidence the militants have carried out mass killings. The Islamic State group posted graphic photos online last month showing the militants killing dozens of police and soldiers. The Iraqi military confirmed the photographs and said around 170 soldiers were killed. Human Rights Watch put the number between 160 and 190.

Ramadi is the capital of Anbar, an overwhelmingly Sunni province and one of the most active battle fronts in Iraq. The Islamic State group and other Sunni militant groups seized control of the Anbar city of Fallujah, and parts of Ramadi in January. The government has since reasserted its control of Ramadi, but Fallujah remains in insurgent hands.

BEIRUT — The roadblocks and sandbags are back, cafes and hotels are nearly empty and many of the tourists are gone.

Anxiety is gripping Lebanon following a spate of suicide bombings, and an ongoing security sweep targeting militants — some of them who had been staying in four-star Beirut hotels — has triggered a wave of cancellations of hotel and flight bookings in a country already on edge.

The militants involved are said by security officials to be part of a network of alleged terrorist sleeper cells planning suicide bombings targeting security leaders and civilians alike. That has fueled concerns that Sunni extremists surging in Iraq and Syria were taking their fight to Lebanon next.

Along Beirut’s Mediterranean corniche, crowds are thinner. Not far away is the seaside Duroy hotel — one side of it still slightly blackened after a suicide bomber blew himself up during a police raid on his room on June 25. At the high-end Beirut Souks shopping complex in the downtown business district, the passages between shops are nearly empty of shoppers.

“In the month or two before the incident at the Duroy, we were seeing a lot of Saudi, Iraqi tourists,” said a 36-year-old bookstore manager in downtown Beirut. “We really thought that the start of this summer was better than the last one.”

“Then the bombings and arrests happened, and we didn’t see them anymore,” she added, asking to remain anonymous because she was not authorised by her employer to speak to journalists.

Lebanon, a tiny country with a history of civil strife, has been profoundly affected by the civil war raging in neighboring Syria over the past three years. In addition to the influx of well over 1 million Syrian refugees to the country, the conflict has inflamed tensions among Lebanon’s long-feuding sects, causing violence, including street clashes and bombings.

The country is sharply split between those who back the overwhelmingly Sunni rebels fighting to topple Syrian President Bashar Assad, and those who support him, including the Shiite group Hizbollah, which has sent its fighters to shore up Assad’s forces against the rebels.

The recent cancellations cap a downward trend in the number of tourists to Lebanon since the conflict in Syria began. Tourism Minister Michel Pharaon said the number of tourists in 2013 dropped by 1 million compared to the 2.3 million tourists who visited Lebanon in 2010. The number of visitors for the first five months of 2014 was down 9 per cent from the same period last year, though the ministry had no figures for June and July.

After enjoying relative calm for nearly three months, a new wave of violence erupted in the middle of last month, coinciding with dramatic events in nearby Iraq, where militants of the Al Qaeda splinter group called the Islamic State have taken over large parts of the country. In the space of one week beginning June 20, a suicide attacker blew up his car near a checkpoint in eastern Lebanon, another near a cafe in southern Beirut and a third blew himself up at the Duroy to avoid arrest.

The explosions killed two people and wounded others. Security forces searching for the militants have raided several hotels in Beirut, upsetting tourists, some of whom headed to the airport immediately afterward. A military prosecutor on Monday charged 28 people with planning bombing attacks and belonging to the Islamic State group.

Now, instead of the relatively calm summer that Lebanese had hoped would bring some badly needed cash for the economy, workers put up roadblocks to guard against car bombs. Guards at malls search shoppers more meticulously. At the World Cup Fan Park in Beirut, organisers erected metal detectors at two entrances to the open air complex with three giant screens. Additional security personnel go through personal belongings before allowing fans to enter.

Pharaon said Lebanon’s security situation is better than other countries in the region. But, he said, if there is a militant “insistence to target Lebanon, this will impact not just on the tourism sector but the overall situation in Lebanon”.

Ayman Fariq Abu Ali, a 30-year-old taxi driver, says his worry is not possible new violence — “We grew up with death. We’re used to it,” he said. He’s more concerned with making a living with tourists gone. In previous years, he had long-distance fares with tourists visiting around the country. Now he waits on the sidewalk for small fares, sweating in the thick heat.

Following the attacks, the United Arab Emirates reissued a warning to its nationals not to travel to or stay in Lebanon, making business owners fear that other Gulf states will follow suit.

“This is going to impact Gulf tourism in Lebanon. If I’m from the Gulf, why would I want to go to a country where every day there is an explosion or a car bombing?” asked George Alam, a political analyst.

TRIPOLI — Protesters have shut down the eastern Libyan oil port Brega, state firm National Oil Corp. (NOC) said on Saturday, days after the government celebrated the reopening of major ports following almost a year of blockage.

NOC spokesman Mohamed Al Harari said the state-run Sirte Oil Co. would have to shut down its production of 43,000 barrels per day (bpd) if the protest by state oil guards continued, without being more specific about time frame.

Harari said he did not know what the demands of the guards were. He said Brega port was used to export oil but recently had been mostly used to supply the western Zawiya refinery.

Last week the government managed to negotiate an end to a protest blocking the 340,000 bpd El Sharara field in the southwest. A rebel group also agreed to restart the eastern Ras Lanuf and Es Sider ports which they had seized almost a year ago.

The protesters at Brega are members of the petroleum facilities guards (PFG), a force made up mainly of former militia fighters who helped oust Muammar Qadhafi in 2011.

The government in Tripoli has tried to co-opt the militias by integrating them into state forces like the oil guards but it has been unable to control them with its fledgling army, which is still in training.

Members of the PFG often seize oil facilities they are supposed to protect to press the central government into meeting political and financial demands, part of growing turmoil in the North African country.

Libya used to produce 1.4 million bpd until July 2012, when a wave of protests started. Its current output is 350,000 bpd, following the restart of the El Sharara field, NOC said on Thursday.

CAIRO — Arab foreign ministers are to meet in Cairo on Monday to discuss the escalating conflict between Hamas fighters in Gaza and Israel which has already killed 135 Palestinians, a diplomat said.

Kuwait, which holds the rotating leadership of the Arab League headquartered in the Egyptian capital, had demanded the “urgent” meeting, the diplomat told AFP on Saturday.

There has been no coordinated Arab response to the conflict which erupted on Tuesday when Israel launched waves of air strikes against Gaza aimed at halting rocket fire across the border.

Egypt, the traditional broker in Israeli-Hamas conflicts, said Friday its efforts to halt violence in the Gaza Strip had met with “stubbornness”.

But it is seen as having taken a step back from the latest round of fighting.

Its new government has been opposed to Hamas, the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood which the military ousted from power last year.

SANAA — Yemeni Shiite rebels agreed Saturday to withdraw from Amran, seized in a push towards the capital, in a deal struck with authorities who are dispatching troops to the strategic city.

The Houthi rebels seized the northern city Tuesday, in a new challenge to the government, which is also facing an Al Qaeda threat and a separatist movement in the south.

The capture of Amran, just 50 kilometres north of Sanaa, threatened a federalisation plan that was agreed in February following national talks as part of a political transition.

The rebels, also known as Ansarullah, have complained for years of marginalisation in the Sunni majority country, and say the transition plan would divide Yemen into rich and poor regions.

In February, they advanced from their mountain strongholds in the remote north towards the capital, battling loyalist troops and pro-government tribesmen.

Rebel spokesman Mohammed Abdessalam told AFP Saturday that the Houthis had struck a deal with the defence ministry to withdraw from Amran and that troops would move in later in the day.

“Our men will withdraw from Amran as soon as an army unit moves in,” Abdessalam said, adding that a regiment was on its way from the northern city of Saada.

“Other military units... will follow suit,” he said.

Amran fell after four days of fierce fighting that unconfirmed reports ay killed as many as as 400 people. The Red Crescent said the violence uprooted at least 10,000 families.

The unrest triggered concern at the United Nations, where the Security Council unanimously called on the Shiite rebels to leave Amra.

A statement said the fighting impeded Yemen’s political transition, threatened to impose sanctions on those blocking it and called on all fighters to disarm.

The council demanded that “the Houthis, all armed groups and parties involved in the violence withdraw and relinquish control of Amran and hand over weapons and ammunition pillaged in Amran to the national authorities loyal to the government”.

Calling on all sides to disarm and implement existing ceasefire agreements, the council also asked military units to “remain committed to their obligation of neutrality at the service of the state”.

But violence was again reported Saturday between troops and rebels around the Mount al-Dhin region overlooking the Amran-Saada highway and the village of Darwan near Sanaa, the Ansarullah spokesman said.

And tribal sources said fighting has also raged in the northeastern province of Al Jawf between Shiite rebels and tribes close to the Sunni Al Islah Party, with seven killed since Friday on both sides.

Houthis, who have been battling the central government for years, are suspected of trying to expand their sphere of influence as Yemen is reorganised into six regions.

They have repeatedly complained of marginalisation under former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, who ruled for 33 years before being forced out in February 2012.

He was replaced by his long-time deputy Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi under a UN- and Gulf-sponsored deal.

GAZA CITY — The music video opens with Palestinian Hamas fighters in fatigues building, transporting and then firing rockets at Israel — but the triumphant lyrics are being sung in Hebrew, not Arabic.

“We prepare a generation of warriors who cling to death like the enemy clings to life,” the words run, with Arabic subtitles.

“A [nation] state of weakness and illusion can’t hold out during wars,” it continues, referring to Israel.

“They fall apart like spider webs when they meet knights.”

The five-minute video is part of a slick propaganda programme designed by Hamas and its armed Ezzedine Al Qassam Brigades wing.

It can be viewed here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HiUWgWjL24U&feature=youtu.be.

The programme is intended both to rally divided domestic Palestinian opinion behind the group during its current conflict with Israel, but also to address the Israeli public directly.

The music video, titled “Shake Israel’s Security”, is a Hebrew remake of a song that the group released in Arabic in 2012, during its last conflict with Israel.

It appears to be the first time that Hamas has released a song in Hebrew, but it builds on a broader strategy of delivering its own message to Israelis.

The Qassam Brigades maintains a Hebrew-language version of its Twitter feed, which lay dormant in recent months, but was reactivated as the latest round of violence began on July 7.

And Hamas’ Al Aqsa television regularly displays a Hebrew translation of the Koranic verse that inspired the name of its current military campaign — which loosely translated means a field devoured of all its crops.

Underneath it lists the rockets it is firing at Israel, as though challenging Israelis to guess what is coming: M75, R160, J80, S55?

A long-honed strategy 

Saleh Masharqa, a lecturer at Bir Zeit University who writes for the Palestinian Al Hayat newspaper, said Hamas had built its Israel-focused propaganda strategy over more than a decade.

“It’s a strategy that they have learned from Hizbollah,” he said, referring to the Lebanese Shiite group.

“As Hizbollah built a team to produce and translate Hebrew, the Hamas movement has done the same.”

Those efforts have resulted in highly fluent productions, like the video, incorporating both Israeli slang and military terms.

“When the Israeli people hear this they are hearing something new and they are hearing Hamas’s message directly from them,” said Masharqa.

The message is a mixture of threats intended to create fear and attempts to turn Israelis against their government.

It also mirrors Israel’s media operations, which include military spokesperson Twitter accounts in multiple languages — including Arabic and video footage intended to illustrate the “targeted” nature of air strikes.

The Israeli army even distributed lollipops in part of the West Bank recently, offering “a little sweetness” to counteract the “bitterness Hamas has brought to your lives”.

Hearts and minds

Hamas’ message to the Palestinians, on the other hand, is a bid to appeal to a fractured polity in which many bitterly oppose the group.

Its television station Al Aqsa intersperses breaking news with footage of its fighters firing weapons and rockets, and Israelis cowering by the side of the road.

During news broadcasts, a graphic of a rocket soars from the bottom right-hand corner of the screen, landing in a small blast that creates a glow near the anchor’s right arm.

With news of fresh outgoing rocket fire, a map spins onto the screen, with red arrows showing the rocket’s trajectory and the distance from Gaza.

Hamas also maintains multiple Facebook and Twitter accounts to provide breaking updates on its view of the progressing conflict.

“For the first time, the Qassam Brigades has fired at the Zionist Ben Gurion airport with four M75 rockets,” it proclaimed on Friday.

Often the reports appear at odds with reality, with multiple claims of Israeli deaths “acknowledged by Israeli media” that are nowhere to be found on news sites outside Gaza.

But Hamas also relies on more subtle messaging, including appealing to religious sentiment in the naming of its operations and remaking secular nationalist Palestinian anthems to promote their forces.

One song popularised in the late 1970s, before Hamas was founded — “I’m coming for you my enemy, I’m coming” — has now been repurposed by the group, and set to images of its fighters firing and reloading guns.

“These are songs that all Palestinians know,” Masharqa said.

“In my childhood we heard these songs and Hamas now is using them to rally a national spirit from people and gain acceptance.”