According to reports from international news agencies, over four months after the ceasefire in Gaza, which the Israeli regime continues to violate, plans from both this regime and the United States to dominate Gaza are expanding.
Recently, an entity known as the Peace Council, established to further American and Israeli interests, has suggested creating a digital currency specifically for Gaza, to be supervised by Israeli and American authorities. This proposal is marketed as a solution to the severe liquidity crisis in Gaza, resulting from the Israeli occupation’s ban on cash since the onset of war on October 7.As reported by Al-Akhbar and revealed in a detailed Financial Times report, efforts to implement this idea are led by Liran Tankman, a technology investor linked to the coordination of cabinet activities of the Israeli regime in the occupied Palestinian territories. Tankman currently serves as a volunteer advisor for the Peace Council.
It is noteworthy that the shekel (the currency of the Israeli regime) is the primary currency used in daily transactions in Palestinian markets and between Palestinian governmental institutions and the private sector, with public sector employees and most private sector workers receiving their salaries in this currency.The daily circulation of banknotes and the prevention of their renewal by Israeli occupying authorities have led to a depletion of cash reserves in Gaza, forcing the population to rely on alternative solutions, including online banking and electronic wallets.
The Financial Times quoted Tankman during an event in Washington, stating, “Rebuilding Gaza requires reviving its digital and economic connectivity.”
The report indicates that Tankman has proposed creating a digital backbone that facilitates electronic payments, education, and financial services, along with a logistics system similar to major global e-commerce platforms like Amazon.However, this project, presented as an innovative solution to the cash crisis in Gaza, carries potentially dangerous economic objectives.
Mohammad Abu Jiyab, a Palestinian economist, stated that we are facing the construction of a financial system with security dimensions aimed at exerting economic hegemony that controls the pathways and connections of economic life in Gaza. He added that this means exposing the privacy of Palestinian citizens and the minutiae of their economic and social lives, as well as the potential manipulation of their consumption behavior in the future and determining public spending pathways in terms of methods, targeted goods, and meeting needs.The Palestinian economist emphasized that this American initiative in Gaza is realized through the unrestricted use of all Western tools, striving to achieve goals and strategies that were once a distant dream for the occupiers and several regimes in the region.
In this context, the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor, based in Geneva, warned in a statement that the “digital wallets” proposed by the so-called Peace Council are becoming “a new generation of silent weapons of genocide in Gaza.”This human rights organization pointed to the existence of Israeli-American plans to reshape Gaza into a space “free of financial sovereignty” by stripping it of its currency and imposing a forced transition to a digital economy controlled by foreign entities allied with Israel. This transformation converts access to money and essential transactions from an inherent right into a revocable privilege for Palestinian citizens in Gaza.The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor warned that this project holds food medicine and housing hostage to forced engineering security decisions and military assessments reshaping daily life and pushing the Gaza population toward pathways of poverty and displacement managed through technology.
The organization also stated that Tankman as the head of this project had previously played a role in establishing and managing an entity known as the “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” which resulted in the massacre and injury of hundreds of civilians seeking humanitarian and food aid from distribution points supervised by Washington and Tel Aviv and was involved in the “engineering of hunger” in Gaza.
