The Palestinian Authority, run by Al-Fatah*, is the only regulator for financial institutions and charitable institutions in the West Bank and Gaza. So in that context it declared Hamas-linked Islamic National Bank of Gaza illegal because it hadn't applied for the necessary license to "engage in banking activities" in the area.

US Treasury Department also designated the Bank as being controlled by Hamas, preventing any US national or US companies to have any link with it.The explanation was given by US Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Stuart Levey:

"Consistent with our commitment to a well-regulated and transparent financial system in the Palestinian territories, Treasury will continue to exposeHamas's efforts to create institutions with the trappings of legitimacy that are in fact controlled by and used to support a terrorist organization."

 The PMA continued with enforcing the regulation and froze the assets of another Hamas-linked organization, called "Friends of the Sick Association", because the believed the charity was serving as a front for the terrorist organization.


Hamas' response was to broke in the Gaza Strip branch of the Bank of Palestine and steal the frozen account's money: $400,000.

Via.

Actually both Hamas and Al-Fatah are descendants of the same group (the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood), but despite that fact they continue waging war at one another. Make no mistake: Al-Fatah is no better than Hamas, but the latter is much more truthful, because they don't hide their goals. Both of them want to destroy Israel as a state, so any agreement with them that saveguards Israel's existence is not going to be very welcomed, whatever the rest of the terms.