RAMALLAH (West Bank), June 17: ‘Mercenaries!’ ‘Assassins!’ ‘Traitors!’ ‘Zionists!’ Rival Palestinian movements are taking their battle to television screens after the Islamist movement Hamas routed its secular Fatah rivals in Gaza.

Palestinian state television, loyal to president Mahmud Abbas of Fatah, and Al-Aqsa Television, a Hamas channel, each has a verbal weapons cache in the war for public opinion following the Islamists’ bloody takeover.

While state television brands Hamas fighters ‘putschist militias’, Al-Aqsa describes Fatah leaders as ‘the treacherous current’. The invective underlines the unprecedented level of hate between the two camps, whose gunbattles have split the Palestinians into two separate entities, with Hamas lording over Gaza and Fatah ruling the West Bank.

The animosity doled out to the enemy camp often equals, or even surpasses, the enmity accorded to Israel, which has occupied Palestinian land for 40 years.

Each side says the other is a foreign agent – Hamas accuses Fatah of being agents for Israel, while Fatah blasts the Islamists of working for Iran.

“The Abbas advisers are the enemies of the Palestinian people,” rails Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri on an Al-Aqsa programme.

A favourite target on Hamas television is Mohammed Dahlan, a onetime Fatah security chief in Gaza whose fierce crackdown on radicals in the 1990s has made him the number one bete noire for the Islamists.

Images of Dahlan and Abbas meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert are aired over and over to reinforce the charges he is a ‘Zionist traitor’ and ‘assassin-in-chief’. During a feature on life in Gaza under Hamas control, the Al-Aqsa journalist says that under ‘Abbas and his clique, the law of the jungle transformed Gaza into a new Iraq’. “Fatah chiefs who fled to the West Bank will not escape punishment,” reads a statement running at the bottom of the screen, a chilling reminder of the punishment meted out to one top Fatah loyalist several days ago – his bloodied body was dragged through Gaza’s streets and riddled with bullets.

A youthful Al-Aqsa presenter, his beard neatly trimmed, opens his programme praising ‘the glorious Thursday’, June 14 when Hamas fighters completed their rout of Fatah positions in Gaza.

On state television, the anger also boils.

‘Shia mercenaries!’ launches a caller to one show on Thursday, as the host tries in vain to interrupt.

“Go back to Iran that sent you here to destroy the Palestinian cause!” Abu Samed calls from Gaza, accusing the Hamas-run channel of “spitting venom... They are assassins.” Another Gaza caller, Radwan Abu Shmeis, says: “If Hamas is at this point still thirsting for blood, I tell them that I am Fatah and the address of my house is well-known. I am ready to offer my blood to satisfy their thirst.” “You have made us hate religion,” says a woman caller from Gaza, breaking down in tears as she describes the ‘executions’ carried out by Hamas in Gaza after their takeover.

Sacked prime minister Ismail Haniya “should know that we will avenge ourselves,” she says, calling the Hamas prime minister names.

Before taking the next call, the host standing in front of the Palestinian flag, tells the audience: “I assure you that all these calls are spontaneous, none have been staged.”—AFP