US Treasury Secretary Janet Jellen during a press conference at the opening of the G7 Finance Ministers’ meeting in Stresa, northern Italy, on May 23, 2024 (AFP/GABRIEL BOUYS)
US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said Thursday she feared “a humanitarian crisis” if Israel carried out its threat to deprive Palestinian banks of access to its own banking system, thereby blocking vital transactions in the occupied West Bank.
“I am particularly concerned about Israel’s threats to take steps that would cut off Palestinian banks from Israeli banks,” Yellen said at a news conference at the opening of the G7 finance ministers’ meeting in Stresa, Italy.
“These banking channels are essential for carrying out transactions enabling nearly eight billion dollars of imports from Israel, including electricity, water, fuel and food, and facilitating nearly two billion “exports per year on which the livelihoods of Palestinians depend,” she stressed.
Ms. Yellen said she had written to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on this subject.
“I believe that cutting off Palestinian banks from their Israeli counterparts would create a humanitarian crisis,” she insisted. The issue could be discussed during the G7 Finance and “I expect other countries to express concern about the impact of such a decision on the West Bank economy.”
“I think it would also have very negative consequences for Israel,” continued Janet Yellen, who also expressed concern about Israel’s withholding of taxes that the country collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority and which it is supposed to paid back to him under the Oslo Accords signed in 1994.
However, after October 7, Israel stopped paying all of these customs revenues, arguing that it refused to finance the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, in power in Gaza since 2007 and which it considers a “terrorist organization”.
© 2024 AFP
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