Norway Urges US To Pressure Israel In Releasing Palestinian Tax Funds.

Stockholm/Washington; April 2026: Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide has called on the US to use its influence to push Israel to release withheld Palestinian tax revenues, warning of deepening economic strain on the Palestinian Authority. The Foreign Minister told the Israeli media outlet Haaretz that engaging US-backed institutions could help shift Israeli policy.

“The fact that we are now incorporating the American institutions, which they enthusiastically have set up, might actually be the best way also to influence Israel”, he said, adding that Washington still holds sway as Israel’s circle of allies narrows. Eide has also highlighted concerns over threats by the far-right Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich to sever Palestinian banks from the global financial system, a move that could devastate the Palestinian economy.

Lat year on 19th September, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich had vowed to push for the collapse of the Palestinian Authority (PA) by economically “strangulating” it to prevent the reinstation of a Palestinian state. “I will act using all the tools at my disposal to prevent the danger of a Palestinian state, including the collapse of the Palestinian Authority, through economic strangulation”, the far-right minister wrote on the US social media company X. He claimed that the Palestinian Authority’s “entire essence is the pursuit of the destruction of Israel”.

Smotrich has frozen the transfer of clearance revenues, taxes collected by Israel on imports destined for Palestinian markets, to the PA, which has faced a severe financial crisis that has left it unable to pay full salaries to its employees for months. Furthermore, Israel had begun deducting portions of these revenues in 2019 under various pretexts, deepening the PA’s fiscal shortfall.

Furthermore, Bezalel Smotrich, has cancelled a waiver that Palestinian banks rely on to operate hours after five Western governments announced he faced sanctions, along with fellow ultra-nationalist Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, for inciting violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.⁠ ⁠

Warnings have previously been raised that Israel’s ending of the waiver could have devastating consequences for the Palestinian economy, which is dependent on the Israeli banking system as the Palestinian Authority does not have its own central bank or currency

Several countries, including Britain, France, Australia, and Canada, recently announced plans to recognise the State of Palestine during this month’s UN General Assembly meetings. Out of 193 UN member states, at least 149 already recognize the state declared by the Palestinian leadership in exile in 1988.

In the same post, Smotrich reiterated his call to annex 82% of the occupied West Bank, saying: “The application of Israeli sovereignty is the only way to ensure that a Palestinian state will not be established”. Israel had started pursuing measures widely viewed as paving the way for annexation, including demolishing homes, displacing Palestinians, seizing land, and accelerating settlement expansion. Annexation would effectively end prospects for a two-state solution outlined in UN resolutions.

Separately, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir had also attacked the Palestinian Authorities in a post on X, calling it “terrorist” and warning, “If we do not dismantle it in time, we will wake up too late, as happened in Gaza”, referring to the October 07, 2023, attack by Hamas’s fighters on Israeli communities and military bases. The Israeli army had since then continued a brutal offensive on the Gaza Strip, killing nearly 65,200 Palestinians since October 2023. The military campaign has devastated the enclave, which is facing famine.

In a major representation of solidarity towards Palestine, civil society demands world bank withdraw from the board of peace; terminate facilitation of funding. Amidst the ongoing genocide in the occupied Palestinian Territory, over 190 civil society groups and human rights advocates have signed a joint statement to express their unequivocal denunciation of the World Bank’s role as the limited Trustee for the BoP-associated Financial Intermediary Fund (FIF) for Gaza Reconstruction and Development (GRAD) and as a member of the executive board of the Board of Peace (BoP).

The statement highlights how the establishment of the BoP and proposed role in the reconstruction of Gaza stand in clear violation of international law, entrench Israel’s illegal military occupation and denial of Palestinians’ inalienable right to self-determination, and provide a diplomatic cover for the commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The plans envisioned under the BoP facilitate an agenda of furthering the physical, cultural, social and economic uprooting, as well as attempted erasure, of approximately two million Palestinians from their ancestral lands. Through asserting a settler colonial, imperialist and neoliberal approach, these plans consider Gaza in isolation from the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem and as a blank slate, a captive investment opportunity for architectural and landscape re-engineering. By enabling the usurpation of land and plundering of resources, the plans being proposed deny the rights of Palestinians to define the necessary steps forward for recovery and reconstruction of their own communities.

Team Maverick.

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