RAMALLAH, West Bank, 23 December 2007 — The Head of Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) Lo’ay Shabaneh said the Hamas government led by Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh is still preventing his organization from carrying out a census in the Gaza Strip.
The Hamas government shut the PCBS offices last month and declared the census suspended after PCBS refused to hand over its data to a committee Hamas set up to supervise the census. The Palestinian Authority’s first census was held in 1997.
The Ramallah-based official said that he told Haniyeh’s government that their demand to receive the census data was against the law, as CBS was not a political body. He said there was only one government — the one of Prime Minister Salam Fayyad in Ramallah.
Palestinian sources said that the United Nations and Palestinian lawmakers are mediating between Hamas and PCBS over the census issue in the Gaza Strip.
PCBS, which began the census in August, has conducted a survey of industries and structures in the West Bank and Gaza; it had planned to complete the Gaza Strip census by Dec. 16.
Meanwhile, Sheikh Ali Abu Sheikhah, the chairman of Al-Aqsa Foundation dealing with Islamic holy shrines in Palestine, said that the Israeli authorities are planning to build a new tunnel under the Al-Aqsa Mosque that would allow Jews to enter the holy site without having to pass through its gates.
Abu Sheikhah added in a press statement that funds had been earmarked for starting the construction and that the new scheme plans to divide the Islamic holy site between Muslims and Jews.
He said that Israeli Premier Ehud Olmert was personally supervising the project that was endorsed after his return from the Annapolis peace conference last month. The official appealed to the Arab and Muslim countries to step in and halt the Israeli diggings.
