Freezing Accounts and Lack of Liquidity: Are We Living in an Era of Comprehensive 'Financial Execution'?
An opinion article on the Palestine Online website accuses the Israeli occupation of waging a 'systematic financial execution' on Gaza by controlling old banknotes and freezing bank accounts, creating a severe liquidity crisis. The writer describes a 'double deprivation trap' that deprives citizens of both paper and digital cash, leading to the collapse of retail trade and the emergence of a 'forced commission economy'. The article calls for confronting this strategy through community solidarity, local clearing mechanisms, and international human rights campaigns.
The editorial on the Palestine Online website addresses what it describes as 'comprehensive financial execution' in the Gaza Strip, where the writer claims that the Israeli occupation is running an economic campaign aimed at strangling the population by controlling the circulation of old banknotes and freezing bank accounts. The article mentions that the Israeli military establishment, specifically the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), issued directives regarding old banknotes, bypassing the Bank of Israel, which the writer considers a dangerous shift towards 'military monetary engineering'. The article describes what it calls a 'double deprivation trap', where citizens are deprived of paper cash due to the refusal to circulate old notes, while their bank accounts are frozen and banking apps are banned under security pretexts, leaving them without any means of payment. This situation leads to a 'distortion of the circulation cycle' and the halt of retail trade, and the emergence of what it calls a 'forced commission economy' where cash liquidity is bought at high commissions, exacerbating inflation and making access to food and medicine more difficult. The writer calls for confronting this strategy through media and political discourse that exposes the 'flagrant violation of international charters', creating alternative financing mechanisms such as local clearing and community solidarity, and launching international human rights campaigns to stop the freezing of accounts. The article concludes by asserting that attempts to subjugate society through financial siege will fail, and that the shekel is merely a medium of exchange while the land and steadfastness remain the true value.