A burly man driving a Land Rover ran quickly into the Greenland supermarket and asked for 10 large boxes of bottled water. When the owner of the store, where I happened to be at the time, asked what the water was for, the man answered that it was a contribution to Gaza. Without a blink, the storeowner ordered one of his staff to add five more boxes as a contribution. At the entrance of the store in this Ramallah suburb of Tireh, I saw two signs calling on customers to contribute to Gaza. “Your small contribution will go a long way,” said an ad, signed by the Latin Church in Ramallah.

Driving through the occupied West Bank, we see large signs that state, “We are all Gaza.” Radio stations blare revolutionary chants, Marcel Khalife patriotic songs and Mahmoud Darwish poems between news reports and interviews with Gaza reporters and Palestinian analysts.

In Bethlehem, Alex Awad, 68, said that he felt guilty every time he went into a store and picked up a product with a bar code starting with 729 — a reference to its Israeli origin. Palestinians have been encouraged to look for products beginning with the 625, the Palestinian barcode. Awad, who runs the Shepherd Society, said he was working with Gazans to help them with the current crisis. Awad is working with a New Zealand Christian humanitarian organization to raise $100,000. They hope that the money will be distributed to Gazan families at the rate of $250 a family to help them with buying food, water, gas or paying for alternative housing if their homes are destroyed.

Awad told Al-Monitor that he was dusting off an article he wrote years ago, calling on Palestinians to stop using Israel currency. “This is a small act but it is something everyone can do and it allows people to feel that they are not helping the occupiers,” he said. Awad conceded that the Palestinian government may have made commitments in the Paris Accords to use the Israeli shekel, but that this was the time to end this commitment. “Israel has violated so many elements in that agreement, including not allowing the movement of goods and people between the West Bank and Gaza. But even if the Palestinian Authority can’t rid itself of these commitments, there is no reason why the people are obliged to use the currency of our occupiers.” A large percentage of the currency coming to Palestine is in dollars, euros or Jordanian dinars. Awad asked why people were quick to change that to the Israeli shekel.