Politics usually comes to the doctors at Gaza's Al-Shifa hospital on bloody stretchers -- bodies torn apart by Israeli airstrikes or shot down in the streets by rival clans or factions.

But ever since the Islamist Hamas movement seized control of the territory by routing their secular Fatah party rivals in mid-June in a week of bloody street clashes, Gaza's doctors have been drawn into the factional divide.

Fatah-leaning doctors accuse Hamas of purging its political opponents in the public health sector, and began a Gaza-wide work slowdown in protest, while Hamas accuses the doctors of playing politics at the expense of patients.

"Doctors are supposed to be angels, but these doctors are devils," says Khaled Radi, the spokesman for the ministry of health which Hamas took over after it seized power three months ago.

He is referring to the 90 percent of hospital staff -- doctors, nurses and medical workers -- who staged a limited strike over the past month in protest at his movement's management of the public health sector.

"Doctors are supposed to help anyone in need," Radi says. "I am a doctor, and if I found an Israeli soldier who was injured in battle -- an Israeli soldier! -- I would help him, even though I am a Muslim."

On Monday the Palestinian doctors' union announced that it would temporarily suspend its strike until the end of the holy month of Ramadan, but vowed to press on afterwards until Hamas meets its demands.

"These actions are a means, not an end, and will help us to realise our legitimate demands in stopping the injustice and the lay-offs and the threats," said Dr. Zihni al-Wahidi, president of the pro-Fatah syndicate.

The doctors charge Hamas with laying off or reassigning hundreds of employees loyal to the Fatah party of Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, which still rules the West Bank from its headquarters in Ramallah.

The row began in August, when Hamas removed Dr. Jumaa al-Saqaa from his post as the spokesman for Al-Shifa hospital after he told a news conference that it was still treating casualties from the bloody takeover.

Saqaa, a die-hard Fatah supporter who used to hang on his office wall a portrait of its former strongman Mohammed Dahlan -- widely reviled by Hamas -- refused to leave his position, insisting that the Hamas government was illegal because Abbas fired it after the Gaza takeover.

"What ministry of health?" he told AFP in a recent interview. "There is no ministry in Gaza now. They are just a bunch of thugs.

"I wrote a letter to them and said they were not the ministry... that I take my orders from Ramallah, from the legitimate government. If they tell me to leave my office I'll go. Otherwise, no."

As word spread that Saqaa -- a well-regarded doctor with more than 20 years' experience -- was being removed from his post demonstrations erupted at the hospital.

On a stifling summer night in early August men from the Executive Force -- a Hamas-run paramilitary group that now polices Gaza -- arrested Saqaa and took him to Al-Saraya jail in his pyjamas and slippers.

After holding him for 20 hours they released him, but the protests continued and the next day scuffles broke out between the Executive Force, demonstrators and the new hospital administration.

Soon thereafter Gaza's doctors' union decided on peaceful industrial action -- Al-Shifa employees would leave at 11:00 am (0800 GMT) instead of 2:30 pm, although emergency services would remain fully staffed 24 hours a day.

After the union decided to partly suspend the strike for Ramadan, Saqaa showed up for work along with Al-Shifa director Hazaa Abed, another Fatah member replaced by Hamas, and both were promptly detained by the Islamists.

Each side in the struggle for power in Shifa accuses the other of injecting Gaza's toxic politics into public health care.

"They want to destroy the health sector in Gaza just so they can make it look like we failed to administer it," Radi says of the government in Ramallah, accusing it of orchestrating the strike.

"In the end it is the sick -- the children who need treatment and don't get it because they come after 11:00 -- who will pay the price for this politicisation of health."

Saqaa insists the strike has harmed no one. "We are helping people and providing every service. Every service. The strike is a partial strike, three hours only... and the emergency services are still working."

"They are the source of all the problems. Why am I not in the hospital today? Because Hamas removed me," he adds.

Dr. Magdi Ashur, who worked at Al-Shifa four years ago and is now an independent consultant, says both groups are dragging politics into the health profession.

"I think both sides are wrong -- I don't agree with the strike, but I am also against the practices of the new government. They are using their security forces in their interactions with doctors," Ashur says.

On the ground, the clash between Hamas and Al-Shifa medical staff means that the hospital empties every day after 11:00 am, when the doctors walk out.

On a recent day in September shortly before 11:00 the out-patient ward was packed with people, doctors racing back and forth, old men pushing through the crowd on crutches, and veiled women with screaming infants.

But less than 20 minutes later the vast corridor was deserted.

"People are used to the strike, so they don't come after 11:00," says Walid Mahallawi, a young man with a scraggly beard who now holds Saqaa's position, and who is charged with showing visiting reporters the impact of the "strike."

Most of the doctors have left, but so have the patients.

In a mostly empty waiting area an old man and his wife, veiled in a loose white scarf she pulls across her chin, are waiting. The man launches into Walid, demanding to know where her doctor is. They have been waiting for 20 minutes.

"The doctor will be here in five minutes, but tell the journalists about how long you've been waiting," Walid replies.

He turns to the reporters. "Haram (forbidden)!" he proclaims. "How can they strike? This is humanitarian work. We've been here since 11!"

On Wednesday, the World Health Organisation issued an urgent appeal for international donors to fund essential drugs and medical supplies to avert a Palestinian health crisis.

Drug supplies in the West Bank and Gaza Strip will be in jeopardy in six months, it warned.