By Emmanuel Nduka
Hamas and several other armed groups have plundered at least $120million from banks in northern Gaza within the last two months.
This is according to United Nations estimates, as the war-ravaged strip suffers from a severe cash crunch.
Mid-May estimates seen by the Financial Times calculated that the stealings amounted to at least a third of the cash stored in stranded vaults.
Meanwhile, at least $240million more is sealed in bank vaults in northern Gaza, with some entombed in concrete to try to prevent looting following the collapse of civil order in the besieged enclave.
The robberies have fuelled concerns among Israeli officials that some of the funds could further fuel Hamas’s insurgency as the militant group gains control of scarce banknotes in the besieged enclave’s closed wartime economy.
The conflict and Israeli restrictions on the movement of cash and armoured cars have limited the availability of physical money. Residents must pay a fee a week in advance to even join the queue for a cash machine in central Gaza, one of a tiny handful of functioning machines left for the strip’s more than 2mn people.
The most dramatic bank robberies took place on April 17 and 18, shortly after the Bank of Palestine — the biggest financial institution in the occupied Palestinian territories — opted to pour concrete around the vault of its branch in the once-upmarket district of Rimal.
The emergency measure made no difference. An explosion rang out at the branch on April 17; one witness told the FT of banknotes fluttering through the air. Thieves absconded with an estimated $31mn in various currencies, according to an internal document sent to the bank’s shareholders and seen by the FT.
Financial Times
