Hamas plans to build Hollywood-style media city, despite isolation

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
It's a tale worthy of its own movie script: The Gaza Strip's isolated and cash-strapped Hamas rulers plan to build a $200 million (€140 million) media city and movie production house that will be part tourist attraction and part effort to cement control of the territory it seized by force in June. So far, though, the Islamic militants have raised only a tiny fraction of the money it needs for its own Hollywood, at a time when the Gaza economy has ground to a standstill and its people are struggling to feed themselves because of Israeli and international sanctions against the Islamic group listed as a terror organization. Even so, Hamas envisions a glittering facility with production and graphics studios, satellite technology, gardens, water ponds, a children's entertainment area and an array of cafes and restaurants, said the Felasteen daily, a Hamas paper. It will even feature mock towns and villages similar to those that Palestinians fled or were forced out after Israel's creation in 1948, the newspaper reported, quoting Fathi Hamad, a Hamas lawmaker and head of the project.