According to the Associated Press, Hamas has ordered census workers to stop counting Gaza’s population. Hamas claimed that the workers were passing data along to the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority in Ramallah but failed to give the same data to the Hamas-led PA in Gaza.
The census will be the first count of PA Arabs in a decade. The PA’s last census was controversial, and has led some experts to speculate that there are far fewer Arabs living in Judea and Samaria than has been claimed.