With a pot of glue, a blade, and a sharp eye, Manal al-Saadani spends her days repairing damaged banknotes — a necessity in the Gaza Strip, where the cash in circulation has grown brittle and torn.

For every note she brings back to life, customers drop a few coins into her hand.

As Gaza remained blockaded for much of the Israel-Hamas war after October 2023, basic supplies dwindled, including physical currency, with no new banknotes reaching local banks.

Each day, Saadani carries a small plastic table from the Al-Bureij refugee camp to the market in nearby Nuseirat in central Gaza. There, a steady flow of people arrives with worn Israeli shekel bills.

“I decided to work and started repairing banknotes,” she told AFP, saying the craft provides her only income.

“Because I’m a woman… most people on the street stood by me and supported me. They would bring me 20-shekel notes and say, ‘Repair this for one or two shekels.’ And I accepted, thank God.”

Working on a thick sheet of glass, she uses a utility-knife blade to spread glue into torn fibers and smooths the paper with her fingertips.

She holds each note to the light, inspecting the tears and the results of her repairs.

Still, she wishes she were home with her daughters.

“Look at me with compassion and mercy and understand me as a Palestinian mother,” she said, her voice strained. “I am very tired.”

Cash crisis leaves bills in tatters

The Israeli new shekel, worth about $0.30 per unit, is the currency used across the Palestinian territories. The Bank of Israel’s Series C notes, issued in 2014, carry portraits of Hebrew poets and are color-coded: red for 20, green for 50, orange for 100 and blue for 200.

Saadani often rubs color back onto faded notes to revive their appearance.

“Go and buy some biscuits with it,” she told a customer, returning two restored 20-shekel notes.

For Nabila Shenar, one of her regular customers, the worn bills make daily life harder.

“Most of the money is damaged,” she said. “If we try to use this money to buy anything, grocery stores say it’s unusable.

“So we’ve had to go to people who repair money — two shekels for a 20-shekel note and three for a 50.”

She said residents need a real solution. “They must provide us with new money so we can live our lives and buy what we need. With these damaged banknotes, we can’t buy anything.”