Lala Land in Gaza....

At least the Daily Telegraph is skeptical..how much of the mainstream press will be fooled???

It was the name of the bus company chosen by Hamas to drive foreign guests around Gaza yesterday 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 the portrait of Mr 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 Ahmed 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 yesterday to arrest several distributors of Palestinian newspapers from the West Bank, the territory still under Fatah control.

The bus continued to the main prison in Gaza City, 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.

None of the inmates was prepared to speak about torture even though human rights groups had documented cases allegedly committed by Hamas security forces.

The coach party was then taken to the main church of Gaza's tiny 204-strong Palestinian Catholic community to hear a glowing account of co-existence from the priest, Father Manuela Salaameh.