Drying Up the Cash: Monetary Liquidity Deprivation as Economic Warfare in Gaza

Abstract This article analyses the deliberate contraction of monetary liquidity as a tool of economic warfare, taking the Gaza Strip after October 2023 as its case study. Combining a legal-analytical method with a case-study approach, it argues that Israel’s liquidity-deprivation measures amount, under existing law, to collective punishment prohibited by Article 50 of the Hague Regulations and Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, and to economic plunder. It further contends, de lege ferenda , that the ‘conditions of life’ limb of Article II(c) of the Genocide Convention ought to be developed to recognise engineered monetary collapse as one modality of the genocidal act, where the requisite intent is independently established. The article concludes by proposing that liquidity deprivation be expressly integrated into international humanitarian and criminal law.