Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas addresses the 73rd session of the United Nations General Assembly at U.N. headquarters in New York, U.S., September 27, 2018. Photo: REUTERS/Carlo Allegri.

JNS.org – Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas plans ‎to impose additional sanctions on the Gaza Strip, ‎Palestinian officials were quoted by Arab media as ‎saying on Wednesday.‎

According to the reports, Abbas, who is currently in ‎New York to attend the 73rd UN General Assembly, plans to convene his government upon his ‎return to Ramallah and outline a series of new ‎financial sanctions against Hamas, the ‎terrorist organization that rules Gaza.‎

Hamas routed Abbas’s Fatah-led government from power ‎in Gaza in 2007, effectively splitting the ‎Palestinian population ‎into two separate political ‎entities. Egyptian efforts over the past ‎‎decade to ‎‎‎promote a ‎‎reconciliation between the rival ‎‎‎Palestinian ‎‎factions—the latest ‎‎brokered ‎‎in ‎October 2017—‎have so far failed.‎

The consistent failure to reinstate the PA’s power in Gaza has prompted Abbas to ‎impose a series of crippling financial sanctions on ‎its rulers, including suspending the salaries of ‎thousands of Hamas government employees and cutting ‎PA payments for the electricity used in Gaza, in an ‎effort to regain control of the Strip.

These moves have significantly aggravated the already dire economic ‎reality in Gaza. With unemployment exceeding ‎‎50 percent and no growth to speak of, the World Bank has ‎recently warned the coastal enclave’s economy was on the verge of “immediate collapse.”

Abbas also hopes ‎the sanctions on Hamas will pressure Israel to resume the ‎Israeli-Palestinian peace process, deadlocked since ‎‎2014, the media reports suggested.