Hamas still hasn't stopped stealing from and executing Palestinians
Holy shit!
This was bad enough:
(Another update brought the total Hamas executed to 11.)
Not surprising, because I follow enough Gazan activists on Twitter to know that Hamas has executed a LOT of Palestinian civilians during the war.
And before the war.
The sad truth is, when Israelis aren't involved, no one is interested in advocating for the Palestinian rights they claim to care about so d
I know firsthand that when ordinary Gazans like myself protested against Hamas, there was no media attention. No human rights organizations demanded the release of prisoners held for months in Hamas prisons, not to mention those who were tortured by Hamas, and even killed by Hamas—like Issam Al-Saaffein, who was killed under torture in Hamas's jails.
It never ceases to boggle my mind that people can post worshipful admiring things about Yahya Sinwar, when he was literally known as the Butcher of Khan Younis for all the Palestinians he killed there.
But I just saw this:
Mohammad Manasra, the deputy of the Monetary Authority of the Palestinian Authority, said today that 180 million dollars were robbed from the banks in the Gaza Strip in the 15 months of the war. According to him, before the start of the war, the banks in the Gaza Strip had 290 million dollars and only 110 million dollars remain.
During the months of the war, there were reports of "armed gangs" breaking into the closed bank branches with the aim of robbing the money there. In Gaza, the incidents were attributed to Hamas militants.
It should be noted that bank activity in the Gaza Strip is expected to resume in the coming days.
But around here, we fact-check our shit.
I ended up having to Google Translate "Palestinian Authority Gaza banks stolen" into Arabic and then do a news search for سرقة بنوك السلطة الفلسطينية في غزة, which my browser translated for me automatically, and which proved to be citing... a Financial Times article in English.
I don't know why that was so hard. Probably because I was looking for something that specifically cited the Monetary Authority or the name of the guy running it (which is actually now Yahya Al-Shunnar) and I should've just searched for something like, "Palestinian Authority Gaza banks stolen."
But here it is, de-paywalled and everything. This is an older article, though, from 7 months ago, so it only identified $120 million stolen.
Armed gangs, including Hamas-backed groups, have plundered at least $120mn from banks in northern Gaza in just the past two months, according to UN estimates, as the war-ravaged strip suffers from a severe cash crunch.
The thefts amounted to at least a third of the cash stored in stranded vaults, according to mid-May estimates seen by the Financial Times. About $240mn more is sealed in bank vaults in northern Gaza, some entombed in concrete to try to prevent looting following the collapse of civil order in the besieged enclave.
By "collapse of civil order," I think they mean "the collapse of Hamas's dictatorship."
This part is fucking wild:
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.
The next day, the bank told customers and merchants to come to the remaining branch so they could withdraw their deposits before more cash was stolen.
Instead, when they opened the doors, they found “armed groups already inside the branch”, according to the document.
All the times Hamas shot people for trying to get the flour it had commandeered for itself.
Because of course they fucking did. This tracks completely with so many other shocking moments.
The number of Gazans posting on social media about having to spend $700+ on tents that UNICEF donated for free. Or having to pay massively inflated prices for food that was sent for free.
The bank estimated that $36mn was taken in this second heist [on April 18], “confiscated on orders . . . from the highest authority in Gaza”, a veiled reference to Hamas, which ruled the territory before the war. The Rimal bank robberies were first reported by Le Monde.
That woman who cussed out Hamas on camera for stealing bread, before Al Jazeera could cut her off.
This part is quite striking:
While the robberies threatened the Bank of Palestine’s employees, the more than $70mn stolen does not threaten its stability given its overall $5.41bn in customer deposits, most of which — along with the lion’s share of its business — is in the West Bank.
At the start of the war its liquidity coverage ratio, a common metric for short-term financial health, was more than 740 per cent, compared with less than 200 per cent for US and UK banks.
Sorry, what? How? I'm dying to know more now.
Liquidity coverage ratio is the amount of cash a business has compared to its debts. If you have 200% liquidity coverage ratio, you have twice as much cash as you would need to pay off all your debts.
So 740% means you have 7.4 times as much cash as debt.
You may be thinking, "why wouldn't businesses just pay off all their debts then?" To which I can only say:
(from this comic by Hunni B.)
Capitalism makes up its own rules to make shit harder. I don't know.
(Imshin's source was Doron Peskin's Telegram channel. Doron Peskin evidently has "over 20 years of experience in Middle East affairs with a special focus on Middle East economies and businesses," and is a podcaster on the topic of money and the Middle East.)
