Transparency & Accountability
Bank of Palestine froze thousands of Gaza accounts without saying why
Image credit: Bank of Palestine tower, Gaza, September 2024 — Wikimedia Commons / Rawanmurad2025, CC BY 4.0 · License
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Gaza's largest bank returned to profit and paid a dividend in the year it locked thousands of customers out of their savings, closed the accounts of the dead, dismissed its Gaza staff by telephone and refused to say how many people it had cut off. The bank says it obeys instructions it cannot refuse. This report sets out what the record shows, and where the bank's defence runs out.
The bank that Gaza runs on#
Bank of Palestine is the largest bank operating in the Gaza Strip. Estimates carried by Noon Post and the Quds News Network put its Gaza customer base at about 700,000 accounts. A bank source told Middle East Eye in June 2026 that the institution serves more than one million customers in the Strip.
That position matters because Gaza has no other way to move money. Since October 2023, Israel has blocked the entry of new banknotes, and the Palestine Monetary Authority says Israeli attacks destroyed more than 50 bank branches and dozens of cash machines.
Al Jazeera reported in August 2026 that residents call the result a "cash famine": worn notes that merchants refuse, brokers who charge 20 to 40 percent to turn a bank balance into cash, and a population that pays for bread through banking apps and the PalPay and JawwalPay wallets.
In that economy, a frozen account is not an inconvenience. It is the loss of every shekel a family owns.
Eleven months of freezes, wave after wave#
The first wave came in mid-July 2025, when the bank froze between 1,200 and 1,800 accounts belonging to Palestinian Authority government employees in Gaza, Noon Post reported. The bank described the measure at the time as a temporary 25-day freeze. Eqtesadia, cited by Prism Reports, found some of those accounts still inaccessible six months later, with families surviving on debt and charity.
The Palestinian Bar Association says the bank suspended accounts of lawyers and other citizens again in August 2025, reactivated them after the association intervened, then repeated the action without warning.
By October 2025 the freezes had spread to prisoners, released detainees and the families of those killed, according to Mus'ab Madoukh, director of the Nebras al-Wafa group for former prisoners, quoted by the Felesteen newspaper. Madoukh told Countercurrents that some accounts unfrozen after public protests were closed a second time.
Between July 2025 and June 2026 the freezes arrived in batches of 500 to 800 accounts at a time, Noon Post and Quds News reported. On 12 February 2026 lawyers protested in Gaza, and the Bar Association then said about 700 lawyers were among nearly 2,000 suspended accounts.
Noon Post reported that more than 30 charities also had accounts frozen, trapping foreign transfers meant for orphans and bereaved families. On 10 May 2026 residents demonstrated outside the bank's Gaza branches.
"As soon as a martyr's name is received, the bank checks if he has an account and closes it."
Rami Abdu, chair of the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor, to Middle East Eye, 20 June 2026
How many accounts in total remains unknown, because the bank will not say. Economist Ahmad Abu Qimr told Noon Post his count of frozen, closed or restricted accounts and wallets exceeded 5,500. Figures circulating in Gaza, carried by Quds News and Noon Post, run as high as 50,000. Noon Post reported that the bank declined to disclose either the number of frozen accounts or the sum of money held.
What customers were told#
The accounts collected by Middle East Eye, Daraj, Al-Araby al-Jadeed, Al-Resalah and Prism Reports share one feature. Nobody was warned, and nobody was given a reason they could contest.
Ahmed Sardah, a journalist in Gaza, discovered his account was closed while trying to make a transfer in the bank's app, then learned his PalPay and JawwalPay wallets were suspended too. An employee told him the account was "reserved by management," he told Middle East Eye. He denies the bank's suggestion to a reporter that he exceeded transfer limits.
"We are living in a war of destruction and constant bombardment, and on top of that, we are being strangled."
Ahmed Sardah, Gaza, to Middle East Eye
Ahmad al-Jamal and Hadeel Younis, a 28-year-old computer engineer, told Daraj their accounts were frozen with no court order, no PMA circular and no written explanation, only a verbal reference to "senior management." Ziad Odeh told Al-Araby al-Jadeed he was given "regulatory and supervisory reasons" and no date. Mohammed Sardah said his account closed the moment a $300 transfer from his sister abroad arrived.
The Prism writer Taqwa al-Wawi described her father's accounts at four banks and two wallets freezing within hours of a payment for one of her articles on 10 March 2026. A branch manager told the family the freeze came from "higher authorities" and named none.
Amani Abdel-Latif told Al-Araby al-Jadeed she withdrew her life savings and bought $9,000 of gold at Gaza's inflated prices rather than risk a freeze. Abu Qimr told Noon Post that gold in Gaza trades about 30 percent above Amman and Cairo because residents now save in metal instead of banks.
The accounts of the dead#
Taghreed al-Daya lost her husband, four daughters and her son in an Israeli strike on their al-Sabra apartment in July 2024. Her eldest daughter, Raghad Banat, received her salary through Bank of Palestine. The account was closed as soon as the death certificate was issued, Daya told Middle East Eye.
She completed the inheritance paperwork and was then told to travel to Ramallah to finish the process. "I'm in Gaza. How am I supposed to get to Ramallah?" she said.
The Palestinian National Defence Commission, which is preparing legal files with international lawyers, singled out the accounts of the widows of the killed, Al-Resalah reported. The bank says accounts of the deceased are handled under inheritance procedures and court rulings that protect heirs, applied identically in Gaza and the West Bank.
The law the freezes must answer to#
Daraj set out the legal frame. Articles 113 and 114 of the Palestinian Commercial Law allow an account to be stopped only on instruction from the Palestine Monetary Authority. The Banking Law No. 9 of 2010 treats the account as a binding contract that may not be arbitrarily restricted without notifying its holder and documenting the reasons.
Closure is permitted where a financial crime is suspected under the Anti-Money Laundering Law No. 20 of 2015. The PMA itself has stated that banks may not freeze or close citizens' accounts without a clear legal basis, Daraj reported.
Rami Abdu of Euro-Med Monitor told Middle East Eye the bank closes accounts periodically on recommendations transmitted through the PMA and through internal risk assessments. It compounds the harm, he said, by preventing customers from challenging decisions, withdrawing funds or obtaining proof they comply with regulations. Whatever the pressure behind a freeze, he told Al-Araby al-Jadeed, it does not justify closing an account without notice or a chance to object.
The bank's answer#
Bank of Palestine has not issued a public statement on the freezes. Prism Reports says it received no answer to written questions. The bank's position has come through unnamed sources.
A source told Middle East Eye, Quds News and the Palestinian Information Centre that the bank takes no arbitrary measures, that every decision follows the laws and instructions of the competent authorities, and that it continues to serve more than a million customers in Gaza despite the war.
A source told Al-Araby al-Jadeed that "decisions to freeze some accounts do not originate with the bank" but follow compliance instructions from external bodies that the bank "has no authority to violate," and that banks in Palestine must comply to keep their correspondent-banking relationships and avoid sanctions.
That defence has a documented basis. Palestinian banks clear shekels only through Israel's Discount Bank and Bank Hapoalim, under an Israeli government indemnity. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich cancelled that indemnity on 10 June 2025, hours after five Western governments sanctioned him, Al Jazeera reported. The move was postponed under US pressure and the waiver later extended to the end of 2026, The Times of Israel reported.
On 6 February 2026 The Jerusalem Post, citing two sources, reported that Israel's Finance Ministry had demanded the bank close 3,400 accounts it linked to prisoner stipends, warning that refusal could end correspondent services. The bank replied it was "unable to act," the paper said.
The same report said the bank had agreed some months earlier to close 1,700 accounts in the West Bank and Gaza at Israel's request. The bank has not publicly confirmed or denied either figure.
The bank also reopened branches in Deir al-Balah and Nuseirat on 19 October 2025 for services other than cash, Al Jazeera reported, and its Gaza digital channels have kept running through the war.
Where the defence runs out#
Three things do not follow from correspondent-bank pressure, and the bank has not explained them.
The first is silence. No law cited by any party requires a bank to hide the legal basis of a freeze from its own customer, to refuse a written notice, or to leave no appeal path. Al-Resalah, in a newsroom sympathetic to the customers, framed the question for regulators as where the bank's duty to apply compliance rules ends and the depositor's right to know and to appeal begins.
The second is selectivity. An employee of the bank told Al-Resalah that staff execute "internal decisions" whose basis they do not know and cannot question, that heirs remain blocked after completing every legal step, and that accounts drawing complaints of exploitative dealing stay open while others are frozen.
The same employee said colleagues were dismissed over first- or second-degree kinship with people said to belong to a political faction, with no personal misconduct alleged. This is one anonymous account, and Times of Palestine has not verified it.
The third is the bank's own workforce. Al Jazeera reported on 24 January 2026 that the bank told a large number of its Gaza employees in the first week of 2026 that their service was terminated, by telephone calls from human resources, in batches every two or three days, without written notice.
The decision covered staff inside Gaza and abroad except those in Egypt, a dismissed employee told the network, naming about 40 colleagues he knew personally. Some took the call at their desks in the reopened al-Seray branch in Gaza City, during working hours.
Abdu has gone further, alleging that the bank built an internal unit that investigates customers' political ties, questions their acquaintances and visits businesses, with training from foreign intelligence officers. He offered no documents, and Al-Resalah, which published the claim, noted that it remains his allegation and awaits an official answer. Times of Palestine carries it as an unverified claim by a named source.
Profit in a year of famine#
Bank of Palestine reported net profit of $44.6 million for the third quarter of 2025, against a loss of $17.9 million in the same quarter of 2024, according to its published results.
Its consolidated revenue for 2025 reached $389.5 million, up from $354.0 million in 2024, the Sada news agency reported from the bank's general assembly. On 8 April 2026 that assembly approved $21.5 million in dividends for 2025, half in cash and half in bonus shares, equal to 8 percent of paid-up capital.
The bank says it spent $4.17 million on social responsibility in 2025 and runs a programme for war orphans with the Taawon foundation.
None of this is improper. A solvent bank is what Gaza needs when reconstruction money arrives. But the year the bank returned to profit was the year its Gaza customers were queuing outside branches to ask why their savings had vanished from the app.
Mahmoud Munya, a Gaza customer, put the grievance plainly on Facebook, quoted by Felesteen: the bank works and invests with its customers' money while refusing the customer the use of his own account.
The $70 million that never came back#
The bank was also a victim. Le Monde reported in May 2024, citing a bank document sent to international partners, that armed groups robbed several Gaza branches over three days in April 2024.
About $3 million in shekels vanished through a hole in a vault ceiling on 16 April, more than $30 million from three safes blown open on 17 April, and more than $36 million from the main Gaza branch on 19 April, taken by men who said they answered to "Gaza's highest authorities."
The PMA attributed the thefts to unknown entities. That cash, meant for Gaza's cash machines, was never replaced, and Israel's ban on new notes ensured no other cash could follow.
On corruption#
Times of Palestine searched for any corruption case, prosecution, regulatory finding or audit against Bank of Palestine and found none. The one embezzlement incident the PMA reported in the period concerned another bank.
The public complaints against Bank of Palestine are about arbitrary freezes, secrecy, obstruction of heirs, dismissals and alleged selective enforcement. Serious as they are, they are not documented corruption, and this report does not call them that.
What happens next#
The Palestinian National Defence Commission says it is preparing files with international lawyers for submission to judicial and regulatory bodies over the bank's conduct, Al-Resalah reported.
The Bar Association has asked the PMA, as regulator, to issue unified rules on when a bank may freeze an account and how a customer may object. Campaigns under the hashtags "freezing accounts is a crime" and "transparency is a right" demand a public statement from the bank and the PMA.
Neither has given one. Until they do, a Gaza customer who finds "no accounts available to display" on the screen has no way to learn who ordered it, on what legal basis, or when it will end.
