While stealing from their Palestinian victims is a common practice by the Israeli occupation army, the latest robbery of the Bank of Palestine headquarters in Gaza is different, as it was politically motivated, the Israeli army says.
The Anadolu news agency, cited the Israeli newspaper Maariv as reporting on Sunday that Israeli soldiers seized 200 million shekels ($54.29 million) from the Bank of Palestine headquarters in Gaza.
Maariv, referencing Israeli officers, said a military force took the funds allocated for the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority in the Al-Rimal neighborhood last week.
There was no comment from the Palestinian Authority or the Palestinian Resistance Movement Hamas on the report.
The Israeli army, however, justified the robbery using unique logic.
“Israeli soldiers were at the Bank of Palestine headquarters in Gaza last week to prevent money from reaching Hamas,” an Israeli military spokesman told Maariv, without providing further details.
He said this step “was decided at the political level.”
Despite an International Court of Justice’s provisional ruling last month, Israel continues its deadly offensive on the Gaza Strip. According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, 28,176 Palestinians have been killed, and 67,784 wounded in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza starting on October 7.
Moreover, at least 8,000 people are unaccounted for, presumed dead under the rubble of their homes throughout the Strip.
Palestinian and international organizations say that the majority of those killed and wounded are women and children.
The Israeli aggression has also resulted in the forceful displacement of nearly two million people from all of the Gaza Strip, with the vast majority of the displaced forced into the densely crowded southern city of Rafah near the border with Egypt – in what has become Palestine’s largest mass exodus since the 1948 Nakba.