Rival Palestinians take battle to TV screens

RAMALLAH: "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 bloody 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 advisors are the enemies of the Palestinian people," railed Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri on an Al-Aqsa programme on Thursday.   

A favourite target on Hamas television is Mohammed Dahlan, a onetime Fatah security chief in Gaza whose fierce crackdown on radicals in the 1990s have 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 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 West Bank will not escape punishment," read a statement running at the bottom of the screen, a chilling reminder to the punishment metted out to one top Fatah loyalists several days ago -- his bloodied body was dragged through Gaza streets and riddled with bullets.   

On state television, the anger also boils.   

"Shiite 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!"   

"You have made us hate religion," said a female caller from Gaza, breaking down in tears as she described "the executions" that fighters from the Islamic Resistance Movement carried out in Gaza after their takeover.   

Sacked prime minister Ismail Haniya "should know that we will avenge ourselves," she says, branding the Hamas premier "a dog," one of the most humiliating insults in Arabic.   

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