AT FIRST it didn't seem unusual when the faces of the Hamas leadership turned up on the group's Gaza TV network. But then they were shot down, one by one, while a message warned that time was running out for Hamas.
Even as Israel's armour and foot soldiers push into Gaza, both sides are waging psychological warfare.
Over at Islamic Jihad's Voice of Jerusalem radio station in Gaza City, broadcaster Kamal Abu Nasser said the Israeli military broke into his sig
nal and broadcast messages at least once an hour, blaming Hamas for listeners' problems.
Hamas, for its part, said it had broadcast messages on Israeli military walkie-talkies threatening to kidnap and kill Israeli soldiers.
The fate of Sergeant Gilad Schalit, an Israeli captured by Hamas-linked militants in 2006 and whose whereabouts remain unknown, is repeatedly evoked in broadcasts and statements by Hamas.
Brigadier-General Ilan Tal, the Israeli spokesman, said he would not comment on Israel's psychological operations. He added: "If we're talking about psychological warfare, we have to learn from what Hamas is doing. We expect Hamas to intensify and increase those sort of rumours (of kidnappings] as the situation gets more critical."
Hamas's ruses extend into the battlefield as it tries to combat Israel's overwhelming military advantage.
Major Avital Leibovich, a military spokesman, said Israel's forces had found Gaza's neighbourhoods riddled with booby traps, including mannequins at entrances to flats rigged to explode when soldiers approached.
Israel's army formed a psychological operations unit three years ago, though its initial efforts in the 2006 Lebanon war were largely restricted to drawing satirical cartoons of the Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, and dropping them as leaflets over southern Lebanon.
More chilling for Beirut residents, however, were the phone calls they received during the war telling them their woes were the fault of Hezbollah and they should turn against the guerrillas.
That technique has reappeared in Gaza, with phone calls and leaflets telling Gazans their problems are due to Hamas. The leaflets include a phone number and e-mail address to inform on the whereabouts of militants and weapons caches.
Ephraim Kam, the deputy director of Tel Aviv University's Institute of National Security Studies, said the role of psychological operations loomed especially large in this offensive.
"I think we did this in former wars, but in this case we had a lot of time, so much more emphasis was given to psychological warfare," Mr Kam said.
Lacking resources, Hamas has largely restricted its psychological efforts to propaganda broadcasts on its Al Aqsa TV channel, including messages in Hebrew asking Israelis to "choose between a peace that gives us back our rights, or a war that will smash you down".
There have also been reports of threatening text messages sent to the inhabitants of Israel's southern towns telling them to hide underground because Hamas is coming.
However, the biggest weapon in Hamas's psychological arsenal is also its best-known actual weapon – the homemade rockets it fires into southern Israeli towns. The thousands of rockets have killed just a handful of Israelis, yet life in the south has been paralysed.
The greatest disinformation coup of the conflict so far, however, came at the start of the offensive when Israeli bombers caught hundreds of Hamas security men inside their compounds the day after
Israeli military radio channels broadcast talk of a "lull" and Israel pulled troops back from the border.
ANALYSIS
ISRAELI troops fought gun battles with Hamas fighters yesterday in the suburbs of Gaza City, while Israel sought to force Egypt to halt weapons-smuggling to the Gaza Strip.
The Jewish state is threatening to seize a border corridor between Gaza and Egypt unless Cairo makes clear it will halt the weapons traffic, which goes through hundreds of tunnels that connect to the southern city of Rafah.
To date, 909 Palestinians have been killed, with 42 per cent of them women and children, according to Gaza health officials. Thirteen Israelis have died from the fighting in Gaza and from missile attacks.
The high toll on Palestinians has not been accidental. Tzipi Livni, the foreign minister, said yesterday the Israeli military had deliberately gone "wild" in order to deter Hamas from future missile attacks.
The full article contains 707 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
