Hamas hands over financial control of Gaza border crossings to PNA Gov’t

Islamic Hamas movement which has been ruling the Gaza Strip since 2007 has handed over financial control on the coastal enclave’s crossing points to Palestinian National Authority (PNA) unity government, officials said on Tuesday.

Hisham Odwan, Spokesman of the Hamas-run crossings and borders corporation, told newsmen that “today (Oct. 31, 2017), we hand over the financial control, or financial collection, to the consensus government of Palestinian National Authority (PNA).

Odwan said “what happened today is a preparation to official handover of the crossing points to the Palestinian unity government, which will be on Wednesday, Nov. 1.

“A delegation representing the PNA-affiliated Bank of Palestine arrived at Rafah crossing point between the Gaza Strip and Egypt to handover the process of financial collection of taxes and customs fees.

The delegation of Bank of Palestine arrived at the crossing to checkout its offices at the crossing point, where the bank, the fees of passing through the crossing which is 75 Shekels (22 dollars) for each individual would go to the treasury of the consensus government through the bank.”

On Oct. 12, Hamas and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah Party signed an
Egyptian-brokered reconciliation agreement in Cairo which enabled the consensus government of Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah to takeover control of the Gaza Strip.

In the past 10 years, Hamas, which was the ruler of the coastal enclave, had been collecting taxes and customs fees from passengers who travel through the crossing points, and goods imported to the Gaza Strip.

There were no exact figures about how much taxes Hamas had collected from people in the Gaza Strip.

However, Maher Taba’a, the official in Gaza Chamber of Commerce estimated that Hamas had been collecting around 100 million dollars every month.

He said the collected monies included taxes imposed on imported fuels, cigarettes, food, clothes, medicine, as well as traffic fines, medical insurance, fees for constructing houses and fees for licencing vehicles. (Xinhua/NAN)