The Islamic Hamas movement on Sunday called off Palestine's first national census in a decade, breaking up a rare cooperation with the Fatah movement.
Hamas officials shut down the Gaza census office, saying the surveyors had breached an agreement to share their data with Hamas.
"Data can't just be given to one side and not the other," said Mohammed Madhoun, an official in Gaza's Hamas government. "The government wants to make use of it for its future projects."
Hamas had previously agreed to cooperate with the census, which is being conducted by President Mahmoud Abbas' government.
Two earlier phases of the census, collecting data on institutions and residences, have been completed and the final stage of counting began Saturday and was expected to last for two weeks.
The census, Palestine's first since 1997, cost 8.6 million U.S. dollars. The Palestinian Authority will pay 20 percent of the costs while the rest comes from the United Nations, Saudi Arabia, the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, the Netherlands and the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).
Source: Xinhua
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