"What's happening? Do you see anything? Anything?" Talal Abdeljawwad, 54, was shouting from the roof of his home in one of Rafah's refugee camps.

His wife stuck her head out the window to reply. "Nothing clear—try moving it the other way!"

"It" was an antenna for which Abdeljawwad had spent US$15 in the hope of pulling in a clear signal from the new Al Aqsa TV station broadcasting from Gaza City. Hamas, the Palestinian welfare and resistance group, launched limited broadcasting in Gaza on January 8, the first step in establishing a TV network modeled on the Lebanon-based Hizbullah satellite network. The Al Aqsa station launched its first trial broadcasts just weeks before Palestinians are supposed to vote in the parliamentary elections on January 25, in which Hamas is fielding a large slate of candidates, posing a serious challenge to the ruling Fatah party.  The sooner the fledgling TV station completes its technical shakedown cruise and broadcasts a full schedule, the more help it will give the Hamas campaign efforts.

"The transmission tests for Al-Aqsa Television in Gaza began today," said a Hamas official on January 8, and will offer a limited schedule of programs for up to three months before its official launch. The Palestinian Authority, backed by the ruling Fatah Party, granted a broadcast license to Al Aqsa Television, the first private television station in Gaza. For over a year now, Hamas has been running Al Aqsa Voice, one of 10 private radio stations in Gaza. The Palestinian Authority has also enabled Hamas to produce a range of print media and Web sites.

Right now, the Al Aqsa TV test broadcasts can only be seen in the Gaza Strip.  Hamas hopes to upgrade its facilities to broadcast to the West Bank before long, and hopes to produce world-class news coverage, unlike the stodgy "talking heads" so prevalent in much state-sponsored Arab TV. Hamas has also expanded its print media, and their weekly Al Risalah newspaper is now publishing twice-weekly. Naturally, with the election campaign in full swing, Al Risalah has been heavily promoting the Hamas candidates.

Ultimately, they hope for a level of sophistication comparable to Hizbullah's Al Manar TV, with reporters throughout the Middle East, including Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, covering breaking news on location. When Hizbullah attacks Israeli targets, Al Manar often broadcasts images of the strike. 

Currently, however, Al Aqsa TV broadcasts are only an hour a day, 10 to 11 AM, mainly offering speeches by Hamas candidates, news bulletins, memorials to Hamas martyrs like Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, assassinated by Israel in 2004, readings from the Koran and patriotic songs.

While Al Aqsa TV will be something new for the citizens of Gaza, the message will be much the same as that on their radio station, Al Aqsa Voice. Its effectiveness can be measured by the fact that the Israeli Army bombed Al Aqsa Voice's broadcast facility. Certainly, Hamas' radio broadcasts had given the Gazan street a new vocabulary. Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz had been routinely described as the "terrorism minister," while Ariel Sharon was always identified as a "war criminal," two descriptions other Palestinian media have occasionally adopted. Hamas has financed its media operations solely through donations from individual supporters and Islamic organizations, both inside and outside Palestine. 

Moheib Nawati, a political analyst based in Gaza city, commented: "Under the democratic principle of  freedom of expression, every political party is entitled to have whatever media it wishes to present and promote its programs and viewpoints." 

Fathi Hamad, the director of the board of Al Aqsa TV, as well as a candidate in the January parliamentary elections, said, "Every free country has a range of media outlets which express unique viewpoints. It's only fitting that the Islamic movement, Hamas, should have a TV station where we can explain our hopes, our Islamic culture, and counter the widespread and incorrect stereotyping of struggle and resistance as terrorism. Ultimately, we hope Al Aqsa TV will be a bridge between Hamas and the entire world, so we can have our own voice in the international media. That will be our second phase, after we broadcast throughout Gaza and the West Bank. We know much of the international media have described us as destructive trouble-makers and terrorists, but resistance against occupation is our right under international law.  We anticipate that our brothers abroad will have our satellite network broadcasting worldwide sometime in the first half of 2006." 

But first things first: After considerable tinkering, the Abdeljawwad family in Rafah did see part of the trial broadcast. A modest start, perhaps, for Al Aqsa TV's large ambitions, but then, as the old proverb goes, a journey of a thousand miles starts with one step.

** Peter Adams is a freelance journalist based in Gaza.