Governance of The Gaza Strip

Governance Of The Gaza Strip

The Governance of Gaza Strip has been carried out by the Hamas administration, led by Ismail Haniyeh, since 2007. The Hamas administration is often referred to as the Hamas government in Gaza.

Hamas party won the Palestinian legislative elections on 25 January 2006, and Ismail Haniyeh was nominated as Prime Minister, establishing a Palestinian national unity government with Fatah, which effectively collapsed when Hamas and Fatah engaged into a violent conflict. After the takeover in Gaza by Hamas on 14 June 2007, Palestinian Authority Chairman Abbas dismissed the Hamas-led government and appointed Salam Fayad as Prime Minister. Though the new government's authority is claimed to extend to all Palestinian territories, in effect it became limited to the West Bank, as Hamas hasn't recognized the move and continued to rule the Gaza Strip. Both regimes – the Fatah government in Ramallah and the Hamas government in Gaza– regard themselves as the sole legitimate government of the Palestinian National Authority.

Since the division between the two parties, there have been conflicts between Hamas and similar factions operating in Gaza, and with Israel, most notably the Gaza War of 2008-2009. The radicalization of the Gaza Strip brought internal conflicts between various groups, in events like 2009 Hamas crackdown on Jund Ansar Allah, an al-Qaeda affiliated group, resulting in 22 people killed; and the April 2011 Hamas crackdown on Jahafil Al-Tawhid Wal-Jihad fi Filastin, a Salafist group involved in Vittorio Arrigoni's murder.

Negotiations toward reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas, which were mediated by Egypt, produced a preliminary agreement in 2011, which was supposed to be implemented by May 2012 through joint elections. Despite the peace plan, Palestinian sources were quoted in January 2012 as saying that the May joint elections "would not be possible". In February 2012, Khaled Meshal and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas signed the Hamas–Fatah Doha agreement towards implementation of the 2011 Cairo accords, though Hamas officials in the Gaza Strip expressed their discontent and "unacceptibility" of the Doha agreement. To date, the Hamas government, under Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, maintains only economic ties with the Ramallah-based Palestinian National Authority, performing the function of governing Gaza independently.