Companies in the Palestinian West Bank say the Hamas group that controls the Gaza Strip are planning to impose new trade rules that will deepen economic and political abyss between the territories.

In recent months, firms based in the West Bank have begun to rediscover the market in the Gaza Strip, home to a third of the Palestinian people, because Israel has eased restrictions on entry of goods into the enclave.

But the companies say they are finding new clauses to Hamas, including an application to register their business, a move that could indicate that the Islamist group reportedly planning to collect new taxes on their operations.

A source close to the Hamas government, who declined to be identified, said he had asked a few companies who have registered. But he said "no steps have been taken to force them to do it."

Complications faced by companies seeking market share in Gaza highlights the deep divide between the territories where Palestinians seek to establish their state.

Source.

But the Jooz will still be blamed for this division...

A boom in sales of halal products, including alcohol-free bubbly and goose liver paté approved by Islamic law, is being driven by the emergence of an affluent middle class of young Muslims in France. Known as the beurgeois – a play on bourgeois and the word beur, slang for a French person of North African descent – these new consumers are behind a rapidly expanding and highly profitable market in halal food and drinks.
With spending power worth an estimated €5.5bn a year these under-40s are forcing international food suppliers to cater for their demands. Younger members of France’s estimated 5 million-strong Muslim community - with whom relations have been strained by the recent debate on national identity and threats by Nicolas Sarkozy’s right-of-center government to ban the burqa - are asserting their economic muscle. As one French website put it, halal is “very good business” for French companies.

The problem is not that they buy and consume halal products (besides the suffering animals get when they are slaughtered with halal methods). The problem would be when they would like everyone else to eat the same (pork restrictions or alcohol ban in quarters mostly inhabited by Muslims for example).

Anyway, seeing Shariah Law introducing itself on France because "it is a good business", doesn't make me feel comfortable. It gives me the creeps... really.