Israeli Press
Smotrich traded the Palestinian banks' lifeline for settlement approvals
Graphic: Times of Palestine
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Every shekel a Palestinian worker earns in Israel reaches a Palestinian bank through two Israeli banks, and the Israeli finance minister has spent his term deciding, three months at a time, whether that passage stays open.
Nadav Eyal reported in Ynet on Saturday that Bezalel Smotrich approved the indemnity waivers protecting Discount and Leumi for handling Palestinian clearing again and again — and took government approvals for settlement expansion and new settlements in the occupied West Bank in return.
The waivers shield the two Israeli banks from lawsuits should a Palestinian account later be found to have financed an armed group. Trade between the Israeli and Palestinian economies runs past 20 billion shekels a year and moves through that single channel.
According to the report, Smotrich cut the renewal period to three months when he took office, so the lifeline came up for decision four times a year, and he blocked a state-run alternative clearing company that would have taken the leverage out of his hands.
The Shin Bet, under David Zini, warned the cabinet that without the transfers the Palestinian Authority's collapse would accelerate and commerce would move into cash that Israeli security services cannot follow.
National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir put the trade plainly to Smotrich in a cabinet session, in words Eyal quotes: "You sold your principles for building a few houses."
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