It looks much like any other television studio around the world. In the control room, young producers stare intently at a bank of screens, occasionally fiddling with the dials on the vast console in front of them. In the studio a few steps down, visible through a long glass pane, the smartly dressed host is halfway through his chat show, politely quizzing his guests about the anniversary of a family tragedy.

It is breakfast television, Hamas- style. The time is shortly after 10am, and al-Aqsa TV is broadcasting its daily interview with a victim of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Today, it is the mother and brother of a “martyr”, a Hamas militant killed by Israeli forces 20 years ago. On other days, the show portrays the family of a Palestinian held in an Israeli jail, or a refugee family that was expelled or fled from its home during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.