By MATTHEW KALMAN

Last updated at 12:50 23 March 2007

Palestinian TV is showing a music video in which a four-year-old girl sings the praises of her suicide bomber mother and vows to follow in her footsteps.

The little girl grasps a stick of dynamite from a drawer in her mother's dressing-table and says: "I will follow Mummy".

Scroll down to see the video ...

The shocking footage is being aired repeatedly on Al-Aqsa TV, the official station of the new Palestinian unity government headed by prime minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas, which seeks the destruction of Israel.

The video is shown between programmes without any accompanying commentary.

It shows a child actress playing four-year-old Duha Riyashi singing to her mother, Reem, as she prepares for a suicide bombing.

Reem Riyashi, a 22-year-old mother of two from Gaza, blew herself up at the entrance to a joint Israeli-Palestinian industrial zone in January 2004, killing four Israelis.

She was the first mother to join the grim death-roll of suicide bombers and the first woman despatched on such a mission by Hamas.

In the two minute video the young child sings as her mother prepares the bomb next to her dressing-table in the bedroom.

She sings: "Mommy, what are you carrying in your arms instead of me? A toy or a present for me?"

Later, she sees the news of her mother's suicide on television and realizes her mother was carrying a bomb.

At first, the child cries for her mummy, begging her to come and put her and her brother to bed.

But then she sings: "Instead of me you carried a bomb in your hands / Only now, I know what was more precious than us / May your steps be blessed".

At the end of the video, Duha opens the dressing-table drawer to find a stick of explosives like the ones used in suicide bomb belts.

Grasping the deadly material, she vows to copy her mother:

"My love will not be words / I will follow Mummy in her steps," she sings.

Days before her death, Riyashi posed for the camera holding an AK-47 assault rifle in one arm and in the other her year-old son whose tiny fingers are grasping a bomb.

Her two young children were interviewed on Al-Aqsa TV earlier this month Duha was encouraged to recite a poem called "Mama Reem".

"Reem, you are a fire bomb, Your children and submachine gun are your motto," chanted the little girl.

See the video here ...

• Most Israelis say their government should have "day-to-day" contacts with the Palestinian government, even if Hamas is in charge.

52 per cent of Israelis polled for an Israel Radio survey said Israel should work with the Palestinian unity government formed last weekend, with 36 per cent against and 12 per cent undecided.

The Israeli government said it would talk only to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and not have any contact with government ministers in the new coalition which is dominated by Hamas.

Israel has called on the international community to keep up its embargo on the Palestinian government as long as Hamas is in charge.

For their part, 68 per cent of Palestinians told Near East Consulting they supported peace with Israel and 69 per cent said the new Hamas-Fatah coalition would succeed in lifting international sanctions.