MIDDLE EAST: It's summer camp, but not as we know it. Throughout Gaza City's sun-baked streets, Palestinian boys in T-shirts and baseball caps can be seen daily marching in mock military formation, chanting slogans in praise of Allah, resistance and martyrdom. Nuala Haughey reports
These are not youth wings of Gaza's many militant groups, but participants in summer programmes designed to offer a much-needed distraction from the harshness of life in this impoverished and incendiary environment.
Throughout the Gaza Strip, summer camps sponsored by the Islamic bloc offer activities ranging from sports and social events to Qur'anic quizzes and history lessons about the Palestinian homeland and Israel, the Zionist enemy which must be vanquished.
On a visit to a Hamas-run camp in Gaza City one morning recently, a group of scrawny boys are just returning to their base tents after swimming in the nearby Mediterranean.
Under cloudless skies, they troop along the sand in two bedraggled rows and respond with choruses of "Allah" while obeying drill instructions to stand to attention and at ease.
Each group in the 150-member camp is named after a local "shaheed" or martyr from the boys' neighbourhood of Zeitoun, an area where Israeli military incursions are frequent and Palestinian militants killed six Israeli soldiers in a roadside explosion last May.
"What we are teaching them here is Islamic values mainly," explains one of the camp leaders, a 21-year-old computer teacher who wants to be identified only by the nickname of Abu Al Bara.
"We don't recruit them to any group or political faction. Some people are trying to give the image that these are terror camps, not summer camps. The pressure and terrorism these kids are exposed to every day in Gaza has really led us to try to find another atmosphere for these kids, to offer them entertainment." Hamas may be considered a terrorist organisation by the rest of the world, but it is hugely popular in its Gaza stronghold, where it supplies much-needed educational and health services.
Children here memorise bloodcurdling chants along with their ABCs, and their role models are the armed men who lob rockets at Gaza's illegal Jewish settlements or attack the Israeli forces who control the sea, land and skies over this tiny coastal enclave which has been under occupation since 1967.
While there have been some media reports of summer camps in Gaza being used to train schoolchildren in guerrilla warfare, the majority of the camps, like this one, offer social and sports activities.
Little Alaa Fatheh Al Jumasi (10), whose cousin was killed while attacking an Israeli settlement last year, explains that he has enjoyed scouting and swimming at the camp.
Alaa says he wants to be an engineer when he grows up.
Abu Al Bara says that about 80 per cent of the boys at the camp would also aspire to be martyrs, sacrificing their lives to resist Israeli occupation.
"I tell them that's right, we need martyrs because we need to defend our land, but at the same time we shouldn't abandon our daily life," he explains. "We need engineers and doctors. We need to build a homeland."
In the camp's largest tent, a group of boys is huddled around a television watching an Arabic dubbed video of the US animated film, A Bug's Life, a heroic tale about Flick, an ant with a mission to save his colony from a gang of freeloading grasshoppers.
Even this movie, says Abu Al Bara, has allegoric significance for Gazan children.
"A Bug's Life talks about occupation," he says.
"A bigger insect takes the food of the ants. It's like the same concept of occupation, with someone taking your food or restricting your movement."
While Israel views with concern any such political indoctrination of Palestinian children, the phenomena is spreading to right-wing Jews.
The Jerusalem Post daily newspaper reported recently that militant Jewish groups were offering special summer camps where students would learn how to circumvent Israel military checkpoints.