Under US pressure, security cabinet extends deal allowing Israel-PA bank ties

The security cabinet votes to extend a waiver allowing Israeli banks to correspond with Palestinian ones for another year — a move pushed by the Biden administration and its Western allies who feared that failure to do so ahead of a deadline at the end of the week would lead to the collapse of the Palestinian Authority, an Israeli official confirms to The Times of Israel

For the past two months, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has only agreed to extend the corresponding banking agreement for one month at a time, adding a great deal of uncertainty regarding whether the far-right minister will act on his repeated calls to collapse the PA ahead of US President-elect Donald Trump’s return to the White House.

Ahead of the security cabinet vote, ministers were presented with the National Security Council’s position in favor of a one-year extension due to concerns that failure to do so would have major security and diplomatic repercussions, the Israeli official says, confirming reporting in the Axios news site.

National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir tweets that he had voted against the extending the banking cooperation deal, blasting fellow cabinet members who have talked about collapsing the PA only to back a measure that will allow Ramallah to limp on.