Media coverage
Charity & Security Network · 2025-07-10
Washington, D.C. — The Charity & Security Network (C&SN) hosted a Breakfast Townhall focused on the Financial Crisis in Palestine on Jun. 16, 2025. The discussion, moderated by C&SN’s Ashleigh Subramanian-Montgomery, brought together Member States,
Washington, D.C. — The Charity & Security Network (C&SN) hosted a Breakfast Townhall focused on the Financial Crisis in Palestine on Jun. 16, 2025. The discussion, moderated by C&SN’s Ashleigh Subramanian-Montgomery, brought together Member States, civil society, and economic specialists to explore concrete responses and policy solutions to this multi-layered crisis, including measures to address the liquidity crisis, protect governance continuity, and mitigate long-term economic deterioration.
The engineered collapse of Gaza’s humanitarian sector, the systematic dismantling of its health infrastructure, widespread forced displacement, intentional starvation, and numerous other documented crises paint a grim picture. Layered onto this is a less examined but equally critical emergency: the near-total destruction of Palestine’s financial system and infrastructure. The Breakfast Townhall focused on this financial crisis and its manifestation in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. The financial collapse in Palestine, with the active liquidity crisis in Gaza and the economic precarity in the occupied West Bank, has hollowed out core governance functions, exacerbated impediments to humanitarian aid delivery, contributed to inhumane living conditions, and severely undermined economic resilience and future recovery. Without urgent intervention, this crisis risks becoming a defining obstacle to any meaningful and sustainable solutions for the region.
The panelists for this discussion included:
Omar Shaban, Founder, PalThink for Strategic Studies, Gaza
Tania Hary, Executive Director, Gisha – Legal Center for Freedom of Movement, Tel Aviv
Sam Bahour, Business Consultant, Applied Information Management (AIM), Ramallah
Due to the sensitive nature of the content of the webinar and in order to foster open discussion, the webinar took place under the Chatham House Rule and was not recorded. More on the context of the liquidity crisis and its impacts can be found in C&SN’s Issue Brief: Financial Crisis in the Occupied Palestinian Territories: Gaza Liquidity Crisis & Economic Precarity in the West Bank.
The speakers offered the following policy recommendations as opportunities to address the crisis. Please note that these have been attributed with explicit consent from our panellists, with the Chatham House Rule being enforced for the rest of the discussion. Policy recommendations specific to Member States can be found in the aforementioned C&SN Issue Brief.
## Policy Recommendations
### C&SN Breakfast Townhall: Gaza Liquidity Crisis
I. Ceasefire and International Law
Omar Shaban, Founder and Director, PalThink for Strategic Studies
Stop the war immediately and Israel must abide by international law and by the position of the international community that demands an end to the war.
Sam Bahour, Business Consultant at Applied Information Management
End the 58-year-old illegal military occupation
II. Humanitarian Access and Aid
Omar Shaban, Founder and Director, PalThink for Strategic Studies
Allowing aid assistance, medicines, and other basic items to Gaza immediately to stop the starvation and the death of children and women by lack of food and medical treatment.
Tania Hary, Executive Director of Gisha – Legal Center for Freedom of Movement
Israel should respond to the Palestinian Monetary Authority’s (PMA’s) request to get cash into Gaza and cooperate with various actors to get it safely into Gaza. It must also lift restrictions on the entry of goods for the private sector and the humanitarian response.
Israel and the international community must recognize the interconnection between economics and the humanitarian crisis, and allow the private sector to play a meaningful role in the aid response. This would have an immediate and direct impact on availability of food and other basics, inject cash into the economy, and restore some sense of lost dignity, allowing the market to supply what people need.
III. Financial System and Economic Access
Omar Shaban, Founder and Director, PalThink for Strategic Studies
Responding to the PMA’s request to bring cash into Gaza. Since the shortage of cash has been weaponized, enabling cash into Gaza is urgently needed to alleviate the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza. The shortage of cash has been instrumentalized by a few community members in Gaza, the occupied West Bank, and in Israel, who benefit and profit off of the crises.
International humanitarian organizations who work in Gaza must insist on paying their Gaza employees in cash.
Israel must take back currency that is too worn to be used, and must provide and circulate new currency.
Israel must allow the entry of spare parts for the maintenance of ATM machines that have been destroyed by the war. New ATMs machines must be allowed as well.
Providing fuel to the Gaza banks to enable banks and ATMs to be operable.
Tania Hary, Executive Director of Gisha – Legal Center for Freedom of Movement
Eventually, the private sector will play a key role in economic revitalization and reconstruction — for this, goods, including raw materials, need to get in, and eventually products need to get out again, and businesses need to have predictable access and access to financial services.
Sam Bahour, Business Consultant at Applied Information Management
Restore full and free financial flows.
Reinstate the Israeli bank waiver, and otherwise allow for Palestinian currency.
Stop looting Palestinian financial institutions and return all stolen property.
Enable Palestinian telecom independence to enable digital financial services.
IV. Labour and Livelihoods
Tania Hary, Executive Director of Gisha – Legal Center for Freedom of Movement
Another key policy priority is reinstating the ability of Palestinians to work in Israel. Recognizing that the Israeli economy is also suffering as a result of this policy and the security arguments are undermined by the fact that labor flows are still taking place in the settlements can be helpful in making the case with Israeli actors.
We are also calling for protection of labor rights. Desperate circumstances like these invariably lead to exploitation, which goes largely unchecked.
Sam Bahour, Business Consultant at Applied Information Management
Allow Palestinian workers to resume their work in Israel.
V. Political Recognition and International Accountability
Sam Bahour, Business Consultant at Applied Information Management
Recognize Israel’s military occupation.
Apply U.S. laws as they relate to Israeli violations.
Stop funding, arming, supplying, vetoing, etc. illegal Israeli actions.
Until the U.S. funding to Israel ends, deduct the amount of funds Israel withholds from Palestinian clearance revenues and use this to reimburse Palestinians monthly.
Stop U.S. 501(c)3 non-profits from funding illegal Israeli activity.
Stop U.S. businesses from engaging and profiting from illegal Israeli actions.
Stop criminalizing Palestinian civil society advocating and documenting reality, namely
Addameer, Al-Haq, Bisan Center for Research and Development, Defense for Children International-Palestine (DCIP), the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC), and the Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees.
Allow the will of the international community to take its toll.
All UN Member States must:
Apply an arms embargo on Israel (import/export/transit).
Support the Palestinian budget.
Support Palestinian civil society without conditionalities.
Respect their own institutions, including the UN Security Council (UNSC), the UN General Assembly (UNGA), the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the International Criminal Court (ICC,) etc., including Chapter VII of the United Nations (UN) Charter.
VI. Restoration of Property and Institutional Access
Tania Hary, Executive Director of Gisha – Legal Center for Freedom of Movement
Allow Palestinians to pull their pension funds without risking the reinstatement of their permits and restore money and property taken upon detainment.
Sam Bahour, Business Consultant at Applied Information Management
Remove 793 military checkpoints and barriers inside the occupied West Bank.
Release ~10,000+ Administrative Detainees held in Israeli jails without charge.
Stop settlement expansion, settler violence, and hold settlers accountable.
Open internationally-secured safe passageways from/to the occupied West Bank and Gaza.
One of the aims of the Breakfast Townhall was to support ongoing efforts to engage in meaningful dialogue and to provide insights and policy recommendations to Member States regarding the depths and impacts of the financial crisis — and ways to address it — ahead of the High-Level Conference on the Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine and the Implementation of the Two-State Solution. This conference was co-led by Saudi Arabia and France, and planned to be held from Jun. 17 – 20, 2025 in accordance with the Dec. 2024 General Assembly (GA) Resolution 79/81. Peaceful settlement of the question of Palestine. C&SN regrets that this conference was postponed due to “logistical and security reasons”, stemming from Israel conducting military strikes on Iran on Jun. 13, 2025, preventing leaders from Arab nations from being able to travel to attend the conference. France’s President Emmanuel Macron has signaled a determination to hold the conference at a later date.
Despite the conference’s postponement, the Breakfast Townhall persisted and underscored the urgency of the crisis; how deeply it intersects with and compounds the myriad of other crises unfolding; and the immediacy of the need to restore Palestine’s financial architecture and infrastructure.
Text © Charity & Security Network — archived here with attribution to the source. — Machine translation for archival reference. — Original source