4 ATMs, 2 million people: Cash crunch compounds Gaza’s wartime woes

This June day, like many days, Nasser Mabhouh stands in line with hundreds of other Palestinians for hours under the sun – with little hope of success.  

Some weary customers who have staked out a position at dawn in the blockslong line running toward Deir al-Balah’s Salah ad-Din roundabout now sit on the pavement, no longer able to stand.

The line can last hours, perhaps days. But Mr. Mabhouh and the others will wait – for a chance to use two of the last four working ATMs in all of Gaza.

“It’s become nearly impossible to get our hands on cash,” laments Mr. Mabhouh, a recently displaced father of nine. As a Palestinian Authority (PA) civil servant, he still receives a partial salary – for now. The challenge is how to get it.

“We spend hours waiting in line, only to be told that they’ve run out for the day,” he says, his voice tinged with frustration. “It’s become a constant source of anxiety, never knowing if we’ll be able to pay for food.”

The line’s destination, Bank of Palestine’s Deir al-Balah branch, is shuttered and barred as it has been since the early days of the Israel-Hamas war. But its two ATMs, refilled at dawn by staff when it has cash reserves, serve as lifelines to tens of thousands of people across Gaza.

In a cash-based war economy in which humanitarian aid has become scarce, being able to withdraw cash from one’s bank account or receive a money wire can be a matter of life and death.

The limited cash reserves in the besieged strip are a hodgepodge of Israeli shekels (the currency in Israel and the West Bank), Jordanian dinars, and U.S. dollars. But shekels remain the currency of choice, accepted and demanded by merchants, drivers, and people selling secondhand aid and tents.

The need for hard currency has skyrocketed since Israel’s May offensive in Rafah, which cut off thousands of families from aid and forced tens of thousands of displaced families to pay out the last of their savings to truck drivers and taxis to evacuate to central Gaza.

It also cut off access for many to the other two known working ATMs in Gaza, in Rafah and in next-door Khan Yunis.

Thousands, like Ali al-Hajjar, have given up trying to withdraw from their bank accounts.

“I stood in line for 10 days just to get my January pension. I got a headache and heatstroke from standing in the sun,” recalls Mr. Hajjar, a former civil servant displaced from his home in Gaza City, eventually to Deir al-Balah. “Finally, I lost hope and haven’t even bothered trying to get to the front of an ATM line since.”

Crime also a challenge

But heat and long days in line are not the only challenges – there’s also crime. Pickpocketing and mugging at ATMs have been on the rise as desperation increases.

After paying a truck driver 1,300 shekels ($350) – the last of his cash – to evacuate his family from Rafah to Deir al-Balah in the midst of Israel’s offensive, Mustafa Tayim, a father of six, sent his 20-year-old son to try his chances at the ATM.

“He was attacked by looters and desperate people,” Mr. Tayim says, anguished. “He returned to our tent with bruises on his face.”

Mr. Tayim has witnessed other fights at the cash machines. “There have been so many disputes where people hit each other,” he says.

Recently, plainclothes Hamas police have reemerged to patrol Deir al-Balah cash machines to restore order.

Mr. Hajjar recounts seeing armed men guarding an ATM and allowing access only to those who bribed them.

That is why some, like Mohammad Ajjoury, a PA civil servant displaced to Deir al-Balah, have not been able to withdraw their salaries for months.

The last time Mr. Ajjoury tried to use an ATM in Rafah, he waited 15 days in a line, he says. He and his son would get in line in the early hours, hoping to avoid crowds, but find people had camped out overnight.

“I was afraid of air strikes and bombings, but I thought I might eventually get some cash to live on,” Mr. Ajjoury says. He has not bothered to try an ATM since February, and now, despite receiving a monthly salary, relies on food handouts, which have become scarce in recent weeks.

Unwilling to brave a brawl or unable to catch the “blink and you’ll miss it” morning ATM refresh, many Palestinians are trying to find more creative ways to withdraw their money.

Some shop owners with cash on hand allow residents to make a fake purchase and pay via debit card at the store’s credit card terminal. The shopkeeper then gives them cash in the same amount of the “transaction” – after taking out a 20% commission.

But the majority of Gazans, who cannot reach one of the four remaining ATMs, rely instead on currency exchanges, which now advertise on Facebook when they have shekels on hand.

At times, when banks run out of shekels, ATMs offer Jordanian dinars, which shops do not accept, forcing Gazans to use currency exchanges or black market money-changers to change back into shekels – at a loss.

Currency desert

Banks had a rare injection of liquidity in May when the Israeli army allowed merchants to import foodstuffs via the Kerem Shalom crossing. The Gaza merchants paid West Bank suppliers with money transfers in special arrangements with the shuttered Bank of Palestine branches, putting badly needed currency into the Gaza banks.

Palestinians who were able to catch the brief influx were capped at withdrawing 2,000 shekels a person.

As of early June, the besieged coastal strip is again a currency desert.

Before the war, international sanctions against Hamas already restricted currency entering Gaza. Since the war, restrictions have prevented the Palestine Monetary Authority, the fiscal regulatory body of the PA, based in Ramallah, West Bank, from sending new cash into the Gaza Strip as it previously did in an arrangement with Israel.

Israel’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, has threatened banking restrictions that would further choke off currency entering Gaza.

“The combination of physical damage to banks, disruption of communications, and financial sanctions has [left] the people of Gaza with severely constrained access to cash and financial services,” says Mohammed Abu Jayyab, a Gaza-based economist.

Whatever cash Palestinians in Gaza manage to take out, it is never enough.

Isa Al Mabhouh used to own a small café in the Bureij refugee camp and now is in a displacement camp in Deir al-Balah.

“We’re living off our savings,” he says. Before the war, 1,000 to 1,500 shekels “was enough to get by for a month,” he adds. “Now, 4,000 shekels is not enough.”

Taylor Luck contributed to this report from Amman, Jordan.