Governance of the Gaza Strip Fatah political party in the West Bank, at a time when tensions between the two parties became particularly intense. Gaza generally obtained its diesel fuel from Israel, but in 2011, Hamas began buying cheaper fuel from Egypt, bringing it via a network of underground tunnels, and refused to buy it from Israel. In early 2012, due to internal economic disagreement between the Palestinian Authority and the Hamas Government in Gaza, decreased supplies from Egypt and through tunnel smuggling, and Hamas's refusal to ship fuel via Israel, the Gaza Strip plunged into a fuel crisis, bringing increasingly long electricity shut downs
Blockade of the Gaza Strip entry into the Gaza strip by Israel. He commented that the Israeli government sometimes would "not make it easy for its friends to explain why it behaves the way it does." A spokesperson for Israel's Foreign Ministry responded that Israel would have been obliged to allow any other European minister entry if it had allowed Niebel to visit the Gaza strip, thus conferring additional legitimacy to the Hamas government. Chris Gunness from UNRWA criticised Israel's move to ease the blockade as not being adequate, saying that "Even if the blockade is eased it remains illegal under international law as it