From the Liveblog of
Thursday, July 11, 2024
US Treasury chief cautions visiting FM against any further withholding of PA funds
Jacob Magid is The Times of Israel's US bureau chief
WASHINGTON – During their meeting Wednesday in Washington, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen urged visiting Foreign Minister Israel Katz to ensure that Jerusalem regularly transfers funds belonging to the Palestinian Authority, after Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich withheld tax revenues from Ramallah for three months.
“Yellen emphasized the need for Israel to maintain economic stability in the West Bank by regularly transferring clearance revenues to the PA and ensure correspondent banking relations between Israeli and Palestinian banks remain uninterrupted,” says a readout from the US Treasury Department.
Earlier this month, Smotrich agreed to partially release the tax revenues from the past three months and sign a waiver extending indemnity to Israeli banks so they can continue corresponding with Palestinian ones for another four months, though the US had been urging him to sign an extension for at least one year and commit to all future tax revenue transfers.
Smotrich agreed to take those steps after the Israeli cabinet passed a series of sanctions against the PA and measures to expand settlements in the West Bank.
During the meeting with Katz, Yellen also indicated the US would continue using the executive order that President Joe Biden signed in February to sanction violent settlers amid Israel’s failure to crack down on regular attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank.
Katz sought the meeting with Yellen to urge the US to further expand its sanction regime against Iran, an Israeli official says.
“Yellen outlined Treasury actions to disrupt Iran and its proxies including Hezbollah and Hamas,” the US readout says.
“Yellen welcomed additional information sharing with Israel and noted that ongoing collaboration to combat terrorist financing has yielded fruitful results with respect to countering Iranian financial and military support to Hamas, Hezbollah and its other regional partners and proxies,” the US readout adds, stressing that the treasury secretary “reaffirmed [her office’s] strong commitment to Israel’s security.”
