Palestinian employees line up at an ATM outside the Bank of Palestine to withdraw their salaries, 2018. (Credit: Mahmoud HAMS/AFP/Getty Images)
Bank of Palestine is the largest banking group in the Palestinian territories. With the Gaza Strip transformed into a battlefield since the start of a new war between Hamas and Israel, the bank took advantage of the truce reached last November to evacuate the equivalent of 50 million US dollars in cash from two of its branches in the north of the enclave and repatriate it to the south, which was spared a little from the fighting and bombardments - reports the Financial Times.
Bank of Palestine was founded in 1960 by Hashem Atta Chawa, grandfather of the bank's current CEO, Hashem Chawa. In an article published in 2015, the Financial Times explains that Israel ordered the bank to change its name in 1967, when the Hebrew state invaded the Gaza Strip during the Six-Day War. Faced with Hashem Atta Chawa's refusal to comply, it was forced to close its doors until 1981, when the Israeli Supreme Court ruled in its favor.
Today, the bank coexists with 12 other brands — six local and six foreign — spread across the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, according to a report published last June by the Palestinian Monetary Authority, which acts as the central bank. Four officially recognized foreign currencies are used in the territories for daily transactions, including the Israeli shekel.
Before the war between Israel and Hamas, these banks shared a market with a GDP of around $19 billion, according to the World Bank, for a local population of 5.4 million in the various Palestinian territories — not counting the more than 9 million Palestinians living abroad, according to statistics from the PCBS (Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics).
Last May, the Palestinian Monetary Authority reported that the rate of financial inclusion — people who are old enough and able to have a bank account, and who actually do have one — had reached 50.9% in the territories. This is well ahead of Lebanon, which fell from 45% in 2017 to 21% in 2021, according to the World Bank's latest Global Findex report, published in June 2022.
With 73 branches and more than 1,700 employees, offices and ATMs at the end of 2022, Bank of Palestine was by far the largest commercial bank in the Palestinian territories before the war, ahead of Bank of Jordan and Palestine Islamic Bank, with 43 each, according to the Palestinian Monetary Authority. It has been listed on the Palestine Stock Exchange since 2005. Its share price has fallen from around $2.10 to $1.80 since the start of the war.
According to published data, the bank's revenues approached the $300 million mark in 2022, up 14% year-on-year. Net profits reached $66.6 million over the same period (+18.5%), while deposits fell slightly (-0.7%) to $5.27 billion.