Israeli Minister Will Release Palestinian Funds if Settlements Are Legalized, Officials Say
With the Israeli-occupied West Bank facing deepening economic woes, Israeli officials said on Friday that a far-right minister had tentatively agreed to release some frozen funds to the financially embattled Palestinian Authority in exchange for strengthening Israeli settlements in the territory.
Bezalel Smotrich, the country’s hard-line finance minister, has sought to cripple the Palestinian Authority, which administers some West Bank areas under Israeli military rule, and believes Israel should rule the territory forever. He has withheld hundreds of millions in funding for the Palestinian Authority and threatened to allow a waiver protecting Israeli banks that deal with Palestinian ones to elapse.
To mollify Mr. Smotrich, cabinet ministers agreed in a late-night meeting Thursday to measures including retroactively authorizing five Israeli settlement outposts in the West Bank that had been built illegally, according to Mr. Smotrich’s office and two other Israeli officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive cabinet deliberations.
In exchange, Mr. Smotrich would agree to release some funds for the authority and extend the banking waiverֿֿ, the officials said, although he has not yet announced the moves. But even if that temporary reprieve is carried out, Mr. Smotrich could demand still more concessions down the line.
The details and timeline for legalizing the five outposts were not immediately clear. While much of the international community views Israeli settlements in the West Bank as a violation of international law, outposts are illegal under Israeli law; authorizing them allows them to grow and expand legally.
As the Israeli military campaign grinds on in Gaza, an economic crisis is unfolding in parallel in the West Bank, where tens of thousands were rendered jobless by the war, Palestinian civil servants have not been paid in full for months and near-daily Israeli raids have disrupted even basic travel.
