Hazim Sharawi, whose stage name is Uncle Hazim, is a quiet, doe-eyed young man who has an easy way with children and will soon preside over a children's television show here on which he'll cavort with men in larger-than-life, fake-fur animal suits on the Gaza Strip's newest television station, Al Aksa TV.

But Captain Kangaroo this is not. The station, named for Islam's third holiest site, is owned by Hamas, the people who helped make suicide bombing a household term.

"Our television show will have a message, but without getting into the tanks, the guns, the killing and the blood," said Mr. Sharawi, sitting in the broadcast studio where he will produce his show.

"I will show them our rights through the history," he said, "show them, 'This is Nablus, this is Gaza, this is Al Aksa mosque, which is with the Israelis and should be in our hands.' "

The new station is part of the militant Palestinian group's strategy to broaden its role in Palestinian politics and society, much as Hezbollah did in Lebanon. The station began broadcasting terrestrially on Jan. 7, and Hamas is working on a satellite version that would give it an even wider reach, like Hezbollah's Al Manar TV, which is watched throughout the Arab world.

"Their success encouraged us," said Fathi Hammad, Al Aksa TV's director. He said that Hamas had tried to find an existing broadcaster to accept its programming but that no one would take it.

"The Arab satellite broadcasters Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya both turned us down," he said, sitting beneath the seal of Hamas, which depicts the Dome of the Rock (which stands alongside Al Aksa mosque in Jerusalem) between crossed swords and an idealized map of Palestine. "Even Iraq and Saudi Arabia refused."

In 2003, after the Palestinian Authority granted Hamas a broadcast license covering both radio and television, the group started the Voice of Al Aksa, which quickly became one of the most popular radio stations in the Gaza Strip. It took more than two years to assemble the expertise and equipment necessary to start the television station.

The current 12 hours of daily television programming, which has the unfinished look of public-access cable television in the United States, consists primarily of readings from the Koran, religious discourse and discussions of women's issues, such as Islamic fashion, child-rearing tips and the right of women to work, which Hamas supports. It will eventually feature a sort of Islamic MTV, with Hamas-produced music videos using footage from the group's fights with Israeli troops. There will even be a talent search show, a distant echo of "American Idol."

But its biggest star will be Mr. Sharawi, whose radio show for children was the Voice of Al Aksa's biggest hit.

Mr. Sharawi, 27, wearing a long black leather coat with a hood over a green suit and tie, fixed with a pin, looks like a straight-and-narrow Sunday school teacher. In fact, he got his start working with children at his mosque while studying geology at Islamic University in Gaza. His hair is parted in the middle, his beard trimmed as neatly as a suburban lawn.

He said the head of Hamas's radio station spotted him leading children's games at his mosque and asked him to do a children's radio show two years ago. The show has become so popular, his appearances at occasional Hamas-sponsored festivals draw as many as 10,000 children at a time.

Mr. Sharawi will not take visitors to see him do his radio broadcast because the studio's location is a heavily guarded secret. In 2004, an Israeli Apache helicopter fired three rockets into the station's previous studio not long after Mr. Sharawi and his colleagues had fled.

Everybody involved in the television station is worried about another attack, but Mr. Sharawi said he is ready to die if it comes. "The messengers don't care if they lose their lives for the sake of revealing the message," he said.

As he describes it, his television show, which begins in a few weeks, will teach children the basics of militant Palestinian politics - the disputed status of Jerusalem, Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails and the Palestinian refugees' demand for a right to return to the lands they lost to Israel in the 1948 war - without showing the violence that Hamas's pursuit of those goals entails.

The show will alternate between Uncle Hazim and his animal characters in the studio taking live phone calls from children and video clips recorded outside. Mr. Sharawi said he would leaven the sober and pedantic material with fun and games, including such standards as egg-and-spoon races, eating apples on a string or "tug of war, which will show children that the more you cooperate with others, the more you win."

Mr. Sharawi said he would dress up in different costumes to suit the show's locale: a sailor suit while taping on the beach, a track suit when in the park, even a Boy Scout uniform while hiking through the small patches of empty land that serve as Gaza's wilderness.

"We will invite real Boy Scouts to come and talk to us about camping," Mr. Sharawi said, warming to his theme (the Palestinian Scout Association is a member of the World Organization of the Scout Movement).

Through it all, Mr. Sharawi will be accompanied by animal-costumed sidekicks to provide comic relief. Hamas will rent the Egyptian-made plush costumes - a fox, a rabbit, a dog, a bear and a chicken, already gray and matted from wear - from a production company run by a Hamas supporter who has just emerged from two years in Israeli jails.

When asked if the animals will have names, Mr. Sharawi looked slightly nonplussed and said: "Bob. Bob the Fox, for example."

He said he was inspired by a children's program on Saudi television in which a young veiled woman and a Mickey Mouse-like character take calls from kids. Fingering a string of bright green plastic prayer beads, a pale blue prayer rug lying on the chair beside him, he tries to reconcile Hamas's bloody attacks that kill innocent children with his role as mentor.

"These are one of the means used by the Palestinians against Israel's F-16's and tanks," he said of the suicide attacks, giving a stock answer. "We're doing our best to avoid involving children in these issues, but I cannot turn the children's lives into a beautiful garden while outside it's the contrary."

He gets up to fiddle with a magnesium light stand in the studio, which is furnished with five beige upholstered chairs and a dusty desk in front of a rattan screen decorated with plastic grape leaves.

The show, which will be broadcast on Friday mornings, the beginning of the Muslim weekend, will be preceded by an hour of cartoons, including a serialized life of the Prophet Muhammad, and that universal send-up of deadly conflict, Tom & Jerry.

Description of the association and objectives

Al Kamandjâti is a French non-profit organization (set up under the French 1901 Association Act) created in October 2002 and recognized as a Palestinian organization since September 2004. Al Kamandjâti was founded by Ramzi Aburedwan, originate from Al Amari camp (Ramallah), he is a renowned musician and a former student of the Conservatory of Angers (France).

The aim of the Al Kamandjâti Association is to set up music schools for Palestinian children – in particular the most vulnerable: those living in the refugee camps (Al Amari, Al Jalazoun, Qalandiah, Ayda, Balata, Askar, Shu’fat…).

Children are the first victims of the occupation. The main purpose of Al Kamandjâti is to create an environment where education and games are children’s principal concerns.

Ramzi’s trajectory should not remain an exception.

Learning music could be an escape valve to those children, who live under very harsh conditions, and make them believe in a better future.

The music schools will offer them the chance to both discover their cultural heritage and open themselves to the outside world. In addition, they will have a chance to explore their creative potential.

In the current situation, working with the children is the best investment: the future of the region (and the possibility of peace and justice in Palestine) depends on them. Because today’s children are tomorrow’s adults.

The musical activities we hope to provide will allow these children to have a better understanding of others as well as of their culture. Those activities contribute to creating bonds between peoples of different cultures, bonds that are a powerful vector for tolerance and openness to the world. Through cultural exchanges, peoples get to know each other. Undoubtedly, culture can be the foundation to a lasting peace.

Music is a universal language. Through it, Palestinians can transmit their culture and promote their identity.

Al Kamandjâti is now working at several refugee camps of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and southern Lebanon. The Association has developed numerous partnerships with already-established cultural institutions. This project cannot be carried out without them; all the energies should be pooled to be more efficient.

In order to be able to carry out its projects, Al Kamandjâti organizes solidarity concerts and fundraising campaigns (to obtain cash donations and subsidies from individuals and organisations) and collects musical instruments.

Due to the support of many partners (Foundations A.M. Qattan Foundation, France Libertés, Palestine Avenir, delegation of the European Commission in Jerusalem, Riwaq Centre, Sida, Tamer institute, Edward Said National Conservatory of Music, Khalaf, Ghanem and Aburedwan families…), thanks to its members and donors, thanks to the children and their families, the association is currently handling several projects.

“When you grab the hand of a child and introduce him to a musical instrument, you recognize the right of every child to rest and leisure, to engage in play and recreational activities appropriate to their age and to participate freely in cultural life and the arts,” says an Al Kamandjâti musician.

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Like most good jokes, this one hides a tragic insight. If only Said and Khaled had caught her act! For these Palestinians, outrage has fed depression and turned it into righteous destructiveness ­ the ultimate in therapy, posing as politics.

Israeli occupiers prove daily to residents of the West Bank that they live in the opposite of Paradise; indeed, even a momentous distance from a contiguous and liberated Palestinian state. The beautiful future exists only in the fantasy of the two young male protagonists, and presumably those who have programmed them to take the violent route to Heaven.

The "Resistance" leaders weave their religious-infused thread of struggle through the thin surface layers of daily maintenance and sustenance, work, family, food, smokes and play. In the dusty refugee camp in urban Nablus, the "Resistance" also selects best friends, Khaled (Ali Suliman) and Said (Kais Nashef), whose futures look bleak, to the honored role of martyrdom.

Having established anger and pessimism in their lives, director Hany Abu-Assad ("Rana's Wedding") then takes the audience through a political and psychological discourse that goes beyond cinematic drama and gives "Paradise Now" an educative function for moviegoers of the world. Indeed, 90 minutes of pictures and sounds from a well-acted, character-driven film, prove more insightful than the millions of words analysts have exhausted on the volatile Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The protagonists live inside limits imposed by Israeli policies, the evolution of their lives caged by the history of occupation, that grinding process that erodes optimism and molds rancor into their psyches.

The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development's annual report stated that the Palestinian economy "shrank 1% in 2004, one in three Palestinian workers was jobless at the end of last year and 61% of households had income below the poverty line of $350 per month" (Al Jazeera, August 25, 2005).

Concurrently, "Between September 2000 and through September 2004, more than 24,000 Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip have been made homeless by Israeli house demolitions," according to the 2004 Arab Human Development Report. Since 2000, over "12,000 homes have been either demolished or damaged in the West Bank" (pg. 31).

Norman Finkelstein quotes an Israeli bulldozer operator, who told the Yediot Ahronot newspaper (May 31, 2002) after the IDF's 2002 incursion into the Jenin refugee camp: "I wanted to destroy everything. I begged the officersto let me knock it all down: from top to bottomFor three days, I just destroyed and destroyedI found joy with every house that came downIf I am sorry for anything, it is for not tearing the whole camp down" (pg. 52, Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History, University of California Press, 2005)

The Nablus refugee camp inhabitants understand the bulldozer operator. He could be the Israeli soldier staring death daggers at Palestinians at checkpoints, the fanatic settler randomly shooting a Palestinian. It makes Palestinians bitter, incensed or weak.

Said's father grew weak and the "Resistance" executed him as a collaborator, a traumatic blow for a young child. He doesn't blame his father, he says. Instead, Said understands how living in Nablus, a human "prison," had eroded his father's strength.

The media doesn't show Palestinians' living conditions, so the opening scenes of "Paradise Now" may shock US audiences. Israeli soldiers at check points aim guns at each Palestinian entering or leaving his territory. They treat them with disdain, suspicion and hatred. The film relies on that opening scene to evoke "oppression," since we don't see further images of the daily harassment and human rights violations imposed by the occupiers. Indeed, the director assumes that filmgoers already know about the humiliating body searches, the bulldozing of Palestinian homes as collective punishment, the Israeli soldiers shooting kids throwing rocks.

He assumes the public will appreciate the symbolic and real meaning of the Israeli wall (452 miles long when completed) that cuts into Palestinian land. Indeed, in a July 9, 2004 advisory opinion, the International Court of Justice called it "contrary to international law."

Nonetheless, daily humiliation administered by Israeli occupiers does not explain suicide bombing. Palestinian fury does not have to mean martyrdom. Indeed, "Paradise Now" vibrates with the possibility of an alternative, one that negates suicide as viable politics. It suggests that this tactic poses as a crucial element in the political struggle, but really has no role in a larger strategy.

Suha (Lubna Azabal), the film's third main character, a European-educated middle class daughter of a martyr, feels the passion in Said, the soulfulness in his sad eyes. But she cannot reason politically with a man whose psychic despair drives him to avenge his father's death, punish the Israelis and cleanse the family name and thus his own soul as well.

Later in the film, however, she does persuade Khaled that suicide will not only deprive the resistance of a valuable actor, but that its violence against an enemy with far superior armament represents the ultimate in futility. In truth, suicide bombing-in the name of struggle-helps unify a potentially divided enemy.

Suha also snaps Khaled out of his religious fervor, his parrot like repetition of the hereafter dogma fed to him by Jamal (Amer Hlehel), a member of an unnamed Palestinian group who guides the friends on their deadly mission. Two angels will transport them to Heaven and the "Resistance" will protect and look after their families, Jamal assures them. Yet, he doesn't explain how the fatal deed will help Said's mother recover from the loss of her son.

We watch the elaborate purification ritual of the would be martyrs, culminating in their physical transformation from shaggy, rugged auto mechanics to clean cut human bombs sporting identical "belts" underneath their new black suits.

Khaled, initially more spirited about their endeavor, experiences the first glimmers of cold reality when the video camera recording his impassioned pre-mortem statement malfunctions. Like an actor, he must do another take, in front of the crew more interested in devouring their pita sandwiches and ready to call it a wrap, than in the profundity of his final remarks.

The video, we learn, will find its way to the shelves of a small West Bank version of Blockbuster Video. In that video shop that sells collaborators' taped confessions along with the last speeches of martyrs, the store owner claims people would pay more for the collaborators' tapes, a statement that underlines the callous foundations of Palestinian life produced both by the occupation and the hitherto frustrating results of resistance.

The occupiers themselves, who we have seen only at checkpoints, take on greater dimension as the two erstwhile exploders take their last ride. For the first time they, alongside the film's audience, can compare Tel Aviv's prosperity and glistening sky-rise buildings overlooking the sparkling blue sea coast, to the reality of Nablus, the latter filmed in mostly grayish hues to evoke the stifling feel of the decaying city.

The bomb-loaded young men, the only objects in distinctly black and white, stand as symbols of the oppressed in their death uniforms. Abu-Assad's astute direction doesn't allow the audience to assume that facile one-dimensional storyline by preaching good versus evil, right versus wrong. Rather, his account about suicide bombers dramatizes the complexity of human response to contemporary oppression.

Instead of mounting spectacularly choreographed Hollywood fireworks, "Paradise Now" relies on subtle, ironic moments to explore an explosive subject. After the first aborted suicide mission, Said screams in pain when his handlers remove the adhesive tape that secured the bombing device to his body. Such a believable reaction from a man who moments before had committed himself to incineration raises questions about both characters and presents the immediate reality of human anatomy: it hurts to have the tape ripped off.

It also raises the issue of whether Said really has the will to continue the mission. By the middle of the film, Suha's luminous presence, her growing affection and compassion for Said, should provide-at least ideally-a counter lure for his mission of death. Could she represent the means by which Said can transcend his desire to avenge his father's death and offer him a loving way out of his misery?

In their last screen time together, the camera captures a sensitively acted exchange of longing looks and one light but very tender kiss: a statement of love or a sad goodbye?

If nothing else, before potential suicide bombers commit to martyrdom, they should confront Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish's lines:

"We have on this earth what makes life worth living: April's hesitation, the aroma of bread at dawn, a woman's point of view about men, the works of Aeschylus, the beginning of love, grass on a stone, mothers living on a flute's sigh and the invaders' fear of memories We have on this earththe Lady of Earth, mother of all beginnings and ends She was called Palestine. Her name later became Palestine. My Lady, because you are my Lady, I deserve life."

("On This Earth," Unfortunately, It Was Paradise, University of California Press, 2003, pg. 6)

Saul Landau is a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies.

Farrah Hassen is a 2005 Seymour Melman Fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies. She can be reached at fhuisclos1944@aol.com.