Hamas slams Abbas for threatening more sanctions against Gaza

The Hamas Movement has strongly denounced Palestinian Authority (PA) chief Mahmoud Abbas for threatening to take further punitive measures against the population in the embattled Gaza Strip.

“This means that he insists on adopting the policy of separating the West Bank from the Gaza Strip and flouting all the efforts to achieve national reconciliation,” spokesman for Hamas Hazem Qasem stated in a press release on Saturday.

“The [Palestinian] Authority deprives the Gaza Strip of money paid in taxes by its population and collected by the occupation at the crossings before transferring it to the Authority,” spokesman Qasem said.

“The steps taken by the PA chief have had catastrophic repercussions on the life in the Gaza Strip and led to the death of patients. Such steps have increasingly intersected with the goals of the Israeli blockade,” he added.

The spokesman warned that Abbas’s punitive measures against Gaza would weaken the internal front in the face of Israel’s violations.

Gaza has suffered recently from acute living and humanitarian crises after Abbas deprived its population of medical treatment abroad, suspended its medical supplies, imposed heavy taxes on its fuel needs to generate electricity, asked Israel to reduce electricity provided through its cross-border power lines, lowered the salaries paid to civil servants and gave others early retirement.