Abbas to stop funding electricity in Hamas-run Gaza: Israel
JERUSALEM — Israel says the Palestinian self-rule government in the West Bank informed it on Thursday that it will stop paying for the electricity Israel sells to the Gaza Strip as tensions between the territory’s Islamic militant Hamas rulers and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas intensify.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has threatened to exert financial pressure on political rival Hamas to cede control of Gaza, a territory it seized in 2007 from him in bloody street battles. Reconciliation attempts since then between rival governments in the West Bank and Gaza have failed.
Palestinian officials in the West Bank had no immediate comment.
Hamas has said it would not be cowed.