For four years, Waseem Abd Alnabi has run a small children’s clothing stall in the Al-Rimal neighborhood of Gaza City. Over the course of Israel’s genocidal war on the Strip, repeated ground invasions forced the 30-year-old to close his shop for months on end. But even during periods of relative calm, when he was able to reopen the stall, he struggled to conduct basic financial transactions with customers.
Gaza’s currency is the Israeli shekel, and because Israel has prevented new banknotes from entering since the beginning of the war, the limited cash in circulation has seriously deteriorated — sometimes so torn and faded that it’s no longer recognizable. Merchants like Abd Alnabi can’t accept damaged notes because their suppliers refuse them, so residents are often left without any form of physical payment.
“I used to take the worn-out banknotes with small tears until I realized that the traders I buy my goods from wouldn’t accept them,” Abd Alnabi told +972. “These damaged notes are practically useless.”
Since the ceasefire took effect in October, Abd Alnabi has been able to rebuild and reopen his stall, after clearing the rubble left by Israeli forces during the most recent invasion of northern Gaza. But like most Gazans, who face a severe liquidity crisis and an economy shattered by Israel’s war on the Strip, he is now stuck in financial paralysis.
“The main and sole reason for our financial suffering in Gaza is the Israeli occupation,” Abd Alnabi affirmed. “They bombed the banks in Gaza and continue to prevent cash from entering.
“The majority of people in Gaza depend on bank transfers or salaries that go into their accounts, but with ATMs and banks closed, people can’t access their money,” he added.
As the sole breadwinner for his family of seven, Abd Alnabi tries to use his own worn banknotes to buy goods for his family, but the few stalls that still accept them charge higher prices as a transaction fee. “They sell their goods at an overcharged rate [if I use damaged banknotes] — sometimes 40 percent above the regular price,” he explained.
Even as the intensity of Israel’s assault has slowed since the October ceasefire, Gaza’s economy shows few signs of recovery. Some banks have reopened, but still have no cash. At the end of November, the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) warned that Gaza was going through “the fastest and most damaging economic collapse ever recorded,” with the economy having lost 87 percent of its prewar value. In 2024, UNCTAD reported, Gaza’s GDP per capita fell to $161 and inflation rose 238 percent, pushing all 2.3 million of its residents below the poverty line.
“I was hopeful that we would soon enter the second stage of the ceasefire, and that the borders would open so I could import goods from Egypt,” Abd Alnabi explained. “However, due to the Israeli forces’ restrictions on the entry of products, transportation costs are extremely expensive, and I decided to keep stocking goods from inside Gaza.”
Yet with the dramatic reduction in Gazans’ income and liquidity, few people can afford to shop at businesses like Abd Alnabi’s that sell non-essential products. “If they withdraw cash through middlemen, who charge 30 or 40 percent, they still won’t have the purchasing power to buy clothes or other items because they will prioritize food, transportation, or medicine,” Abd Alnabi reflected.
During the war, more residents with bank accounts and saved earnings started using Gaza’s local banking app to send and receive money, avoiding the high and constantly fluctuating fees imposed by cash brokers. Yet serious obstacles persist — foremost among them Gaza’s unstable and often nonexistent internet connectivity.
Even when Abd Alnabi has secured the rare customer, it is often impossible to facilitate the transaction. “After customers spend time choosing what they want and we agree on the price, I sometimes have to cancel the sale because the internet suddenly goes out, especially in Al-Rimal neighborhood, where I work.
“I can’t let people take what they want and leave before paying, because I’m not sure they’ll be able to transfer the money once they’re gone,” Abd Alnabi continued. “I earn very little money through my work — if one or two customers buy and don’t pay, I could go broke and be forced to close my stall.”
‘Almost half of my salary was lost to middlemen’
The financial crisis has affected every corner of Gaza’s economy, from merchants like Abd Alnabi to government employees who can’t access their full salaries.
Yousef Al-Ajrami, 40, works for the Palestinian Authority as part of the Palestinian Presidential Guard. Since his home in the northern town of Beit Lahiya was destroyed in early 2024, he has lived with his family of seven in a tent in Khan Younis.
When the war began and ATMs were still operating, Al-Ajrami spent hours waiting in long lines to access his salary. “I had to sleep overnight in the street near the ATM just to withdraw my money before it ran out,” he told +972.
Some ATMs were controlled by local gangs who sold spots in the line for as much as NIS 200 ($60), and intimidated locals who didn’t buy them. In the early days of the war, Al-Ajrami left his tent to line up for an ATM at 1 a.m, seven hours in advance.
“When it opened, a group of people armed with sticks and knives disrupted the line until a bank security team arrived and started beating everyone, including me. I ended up bedridden for a week.”
While ATMs in northern Gaza ran out of money within the first weeks after October 7, due to the intensity of Israeli attacks, bank staff were able to continue reloading machines in the southern part of the enclave. Yet after Israeli forces invaded Rafah in May 2024, according to Al-Ajrami and other residents, most ATMs throughout the Strip remained empty or were damaged beyond repair — with only two out of Gaza’s 94 ATMs still functional by February 2025, according to the World Bank — forcing Gazans to rely on brokers to withdraw cash.
For most of the war, Al-Ajrami only received a part of his NIS 1,500 ($470) monthly paycheck. “Almost half of my salary was lost to middlemen,” he told +972. Even after the ceasefire, Al-Ajrami still depends on brokers to access his salary, although their fees have decreased with more shops now accepting bank app transfers.
Lacking fungible cash, and with online transfers unreliable and salaries delayed or reduced, Al-Ajrami has turned to relatives and friends to borrow money. “I have no options — my only income is my salary, while prices for basic goods in Gaza have skyrocketed,” Al-Ajrami said. “No normal human being can get used to living helplessly, unable to provide for their family, after a genocidal war left us homeless.”
Crypto challenges
The financial crisis has also made it difficult for Gazans to receive remittances from abroad. Before the war, Sami Riad, a 36-year-old from Gaza City, would receive money from his sister in Canada to support his family of four, which he withdrew through the Bank of Palestine. But when Israel’s bombing campaign and ground invasions forced Gaza’s banks to close, Riad had no option but to turn to money exchange and transfer offices.
For a short period, he relied on PayPal and Western Union — until these services, too, were restricted or suspended as part of what many Palestinians describe as Israel’s systematic engineering of Gaza’s economic collapse.
“It felt helpless,” Riad said. “I had no cash to buy food and pay the transportation costs during the evacuation from one place to another. My sister wanted to send me money, but there was no way to receive it.”
According to Wajeeh Ajour, 42, who has worked in money transfer and currency exchange offices in Gaza for eight years, services were cut off within a few months after October 7. “Israel blocked many transfer channels like Western Union, and senders abroad were asked endless questions about why they were sending money to Gaza and to whom.”
As traditional channels shut down, cryptocurrency — largely unknown in Gaza before the war — gained a foothold as one of the few methods of financial exchange unregulated by Israeli authorities. “It doesn’t require many details, and once the transfer arrives, it can be withdrawn immediately,” Ajour explained.
For seven months after October 7, Riad could not access any external support from family abroad, until one of his friends told him about cryptocurrency. “I received 500 USDT from my sister,” he said, referring to a stablecoin that is pegged to the U.S. dollar. “The money arrived within minutes, but the problem was finding a stable connection to contact people and receive the code for the transfer.”
Indeed, with Gaza suffering from total electricity outages and unstable internet due to Israeli attacks, even the use of cryptocurrency has been precarious.
“Many times, we lost the connection during transactions and had to cancel deals,” Ajour explained. During the ceasefire in early 2025, he bought solar panels at 10 times the normal price to establish better internet connection and complete cryptocurrency exchanges. Three months later, the panels were damaged in an airstrike and were no longer usable.
Many larger retailers in Gaza, along with an increasing number of street vendors and small businesses, now accept cryptocurrency as a form of payment, albeit often at inflated prices. But for most of the war, converting digital currency into physical notes was a challenge at a time when banks and ATMs were entirely out of service. “Most shops only accepted cash,” Riad said. “I had to exchange 100 USDT and lose over 30 percent of its value — I had no other choice.”
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The vulnerability of cryptocurrency has also come with another danger: digital wallet shutdowns. Ajour’s wallet on the cryptocurrency exchange Binance has been frozen for four months, cutting him off from $100,000 in funds. “When I emailed the platform, they said [it was closed due to a complaint that the money would be used for] terrorism or money laundering,” he told +972.
Ajour discovered a link on his Binance account with words in Hebrew, which mentioned an email to contact regarding the complaint. After reaching out, the reply to his email — also in Hebrew — claimed that the wallet “had received money intended for terrorism,” leading Ajour to believe that the Israeli authorities were responsible for freezing his account. “I learned many others in Gaza were closed with the same claims,” he added.
Some see these new barriers on cryptocurrency as part of a broader strategy to squeeze Gaza of its remaining financial resources. “They don’t allow cash into Gaza, banks are not functioning, people cannot access their accounts except through middlemen,” Ajour said. “Israel wants to increase people’s suffering in every possible way.”
