Between Haifa and Nablus: Fifty-One Years of Trust

I deposited his savings at the Arab Bank branch... in Haifa in 1944

                    and he received them in full at the Arab Bank branch in Nablus in 1995

-         Not all banking stories are numbers and accounts. Some become a testimony to history, and a lesson in the meaning of trust that neither wars can defeat nor years erase.

-         This is one of those stories:

·        In 1944, the Palestinian citizen Haj Saeed Sammara Yassin entered the Arab Bank branch in the city of Haifa and deposited an amount of money into his current account. He did not know that the coming years would bring the Nakba, displacement, and occupation, that cities would fall, institutions would perish, and hundreds of thousands would leave their homes by force leaving behind everything they owned, but one thing did not leave his memory... his passbook at the Arab Bank!

-         He kept it for more than fifty-one years, believing that his money was still safe, despite everything that happened to Palestine and the region.

·        And in 1995, while I was manager of the Arab Bank branch in Nablus, the man entered my office, worn down by the years, and put before me the deposit passbook that he had kept throughout those decades!

-         We began searching the records, and the surprise was that the account still existed. After completing the procedures, Haj Saeed received his full balance, with nothing deducted!

·        At that moment the bank was not merely handing over money, but was delivering to its owner a promise made more than half a century earlier, and kept despite changing states, borders, and regimes.!

·        During those decades, banks burned, institutions closed, properties were confiscated, and an entire people were displaced, but the Arab Bank remained faithful to its mission of protecting the rights of its depositors wherever they were.

·        And a few days ago, one of my sons, who lives abroad, returned to me a clipping from the Jordanian newspaper Ad-Dustour dated 18 July 1995, which he had kept all these years while I had been searching for it for a very long time. The moment my eyes fell on it the details of that incident returned to me with all the human and professional meanings it carried (the economic page of Ad-Dustour newspaper is attached)

·        I spent twenty years at the Arab Bank, starting in 1974, and eleven years at other banks, during which I learned that banking does not rest on numbers alone, but on trust; it is the real capital of any financial institution. For this reason the Arab Bank was not merely a bank to me, but a venerable school, Palestinian in origin, Arab in affiliation, global in outlook, which over a century managed to build its reputation on commitment and to make trust a contract that does not lapse with time!

·        People may forget the value of money as time passes, but they do not forget the institution that preserved their rights when everyone thought that time had swallowed them!

·        And in conclusion... cities may be demolished, borders changed, and regimes succeed one another, but great institutions are measured by their ability to fulfill their promises. And this story is not merely a tale of a deposit retrieved after fifty-one years, but a testimony that trust, when built on principles, can cross time. It is the Arab Bank "a life’s course" throughout a century!