Planet Money (NPR)

Episode: In Gaza, money is falling apart

Date: September 20, 2025
Host: Sarah Gonzalez

Episode Overview

This episode dives into the breakdown of Gaza’s economic infrastructure amid the ongoing war, focusing on how a severe shortage of cash—and the collapse of the financial system—upends daily life. Through the story of two friends, Al Din Allah (the Prince, now in Belgium) and Mohammed Awad (Modi, the Maestro, in Gaza), and the voices of residents like Haya, the show explores the intricate, often desperate ways Gazans navigate money shortages, hyperinflation, and scarcity of basic goods. The episode both personalizes and explains the mechanics of Gaza’s failing economy, from makeshift aid systems to barter, digital banking woes, and the physical disintegration of paper currency itself.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Personal Connections as Economic Lifelines

• Reunion of Friends: Sarah introduces Al Din (in Belgium) and Mohammed (in Gaza), who have not seen each other in 11 years but work together daily to get money and essentials into Gaza. Their childhood memories—like buying falafel on the way to school—contrast sharply with Gaza’s current devastation.
  “Muhammad is really like the best human I can know...when bad things happening, Muhammad got in even more like higher place inside my soul.” – Al Din (01:15)

2. Collapse of Gaza’s Cash Economy

• Currency in Crisis: Gaza relies on Israeli shekels, but no new cash has entered for nearly two years. Banks and ATMs are defunct. The physical money left is disintegrating from overuse. “Whatever paper cash was in Gaza before the war started, that's basically all that's been circulating for two years. It's been overused so much, the bills are now faded and fraying.” – Sarah (05:00)

• Impossibility of Banking: With no banks and spotty electricity or internet, digital money is practically useless for many. People want paper money, but there’s a steep fee—sometimes 50%—to convert digital bank funds to hard cash. “We buy money with money.” – Haya (13:22)

3. The Social Cost of Scarcity

• Scenes from the Camps: Haya, a 23-year-old Gaza resident, describes life in a tent camp, losing her home, basic security, and comforts like studying or baking.
  “No, I don't have a home. I have a tent.” – Haya (09:17)

• Barter and Hyperinflation: With jobs almost nonexistent and the little food available, people barter—in one example, oil for flour. The cash shortage leads to hyperinflation:

  • Tomatoes: $32 per kilo (16:40)
  • Cooking oil: +1200% in spring
  • Flour: +5000%
  • Tents: $900
  • Diapers: $75 per pack (previously $6)

• Danger and Survival: Collecting aid or shopping is risky; as Al Din notes, even getting food is life-threatening.
  “Who want to bring the food, he need to be like in really good shape and like ready to die. So they making it as a job.” – Al Din (16:15)

4. Creative Crisis Money Flows

• ‘Impossible Light’ Project: Al Din and Mohammed coordinate an informal, transnational aid network called Impossible Light. Using a web of Palestinian bank accounts and personal relationships, they route donations into Gaza.

  • “You cannot easily or regularly walk into a bank in Belgium or the US Or Egypt and say, here, I'd like to deposit all of these donations into the account of this person I know in Gaza.” – Sarah (22:11)
  • They perform a kind of currency swap, trading donated euros (or dollars, yen, etc.) for shekels held by Palestinians abroad, and then transferring those shekels internally to Gaza-based accounts.

• Bank & Regulatory Barriers: Formal remittances are fraught with anti-terror controls. Even relatives face transfers being frozen or returned unless strictly documented.

5. The Price of Paper: Cash Brokers and ‘Repairmen’

• Buying Money: “Cash brokers” or “money changers” sell cash at ruinous rates.
  “You show up to the money exchanger with 100 shekels, like in your bank, and you transfer it into his bank account like that...And the money exchanger Give me 50 shekels.” – Haya (13:42)

• Money Falling Apart: Torn, worn bills may be rejected by shopkeepers, requiring “cash repair people”—another layer of middlemen in the financial system crisis. “The money become hurts and destroyed. So when you offer it to a seller, they don't accept, become nothing, become worthless.” – Mohammed (30:39)

6. Living on the Margin and Hoping for Normalcy

• Even the Rich are Stranded:
  “You can be the richest person in Gaza. It doesn't mean anything when there's nothing to buy.” – Sarah (33:13)
• Kids and Online Worlds: Mohammed’s daughter watches YouTube, longing for foods not available, highlighting the surreal contrast between digital connection and daily deprivation.
• Persistence and Hope: Despite everything, Haya keeps studying online and maintains hope for Gaza’s reconstruction.
  “Hope is the only thing Israel can't take from me. So there's a hope. Always hope for good future, hope for this war stop in one day. Hope for graduation like that. Rebuilding the Gaza Also.” – Haya (36:28)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On friendship and resilience:
  "He's my best friend. He's my brother. He's everything that friendship mean." – Mohammed (01:04)

• On economic devastation:
  “We eat right now to stay alive, not for joy.” – Mohammed (02:56)

• On the cost of scarcity:
  “A kilo of tomatoes now cost us about $32.” – Haya (16:40)
  "Three tomatoes cost 21 shekels." – Haya (36:09)

• On loss and hope:
  “Hope is the only thing Israel can't take from me.” – Haya (36:28)

• On innovation under blockade:
  "The trick is to trade them for those shekels. Like your shekels for my euros or pounds or yen or dollars, whatever currency they now use." – Sarah (25:42)

• On risk and survival:
  “Who want to bring the food, he need to be like in really good shape and like ready to die.” – Al Din (16:15)

Important Timestamps for Core Segments

• [01:04] – Mohammed and Al Din reflect on their friendship
• [02:56] – How food and money use have changed (“We eat right now to stay alive…”)
• [05:00] – The physical collapse of Gaza’s cash infrastructure
• [11:24] – Bartering as a primary economic mechanism
• [13:22] – "We buy money with money" explained
• [16:40] – Hyperinflation and food prices
• [22:11] – Explanation of Impossible Light’s informal banking workaround
• [25:42] – The mechanics of international money swaps for Gazan shekels
• [30:39] – Worthless cash and the need for “cash repairpeople”
• [33:13] – Difficulty of using money when there’s nothing to buy
• [36:28] – Haya's final reflection on hope and the endurance of Gazans

Episode Flow

1. Introductions & Background: Stories of enduring friendship, the nostalgia for a pre-war Gaza, and the personal effects of conflict (01:04–02:56).
2. Crisis Explained: How the shekel shortage and banking collapse have made regular transactions impossible; the emergence of cash brokers (05:00–13:22).
3. Stories from Gaza: Haya’s life in a tent camp, barter, hyperinflation, and extreme risk in merely accessing food or aid (08:17–18:50).
4. DIY Aid Networks: The mechanics, risks, and creativity of Impossible Light’s efforts, navigating regulatory minefields and informal currencies (21:28–28:30).
5. Physical & Economic Decay: The literal disintegration of cash and the market for repaired currency; growing futility of wealth in absence of goods (30:39–33:13).
6. Children, Digital Connection & Persistent Hope: Contrasts between online life and real world deprivation, Gazans’ continued hope for peace and future (34:26–36:28).

Tone & Takeaways

The tone is intimate, direct, and often conversational, alternating between narrative explanation and the raw voices of people living the crisis. It is vivid, compassionate, and forthright about the moral, logistical, and human complexity of survival in Gaza’s shattered economy.

The episode’s essential message: In places where money and markets literally fall apart, ingenuity, networks of trust, and stubborn hope sustain people—but survival comes at great cost, and the system's collapse is not merely a technical failure, but a fundamentally human crisis.