Rory Stewart

But there are three ways in which it's been crippled.

One of them is quite technical, which we're not going to get into on the show, which is about an excess shekel problem and about how you convert Israeli cash back into bank accounts.

The second problem, though, is a really big problem, which is about customs clearance.

So because it's an import economy, the money that traditionally came to the Palestinian Authority was from import taxes, and the Israeli government collects those import taxes and passes them on.

And there are two problems.

One is they haven't been passing them on.

And the second is they've been putting more and more charges on them before they passed them on under various excuses.

So even if they did pass them on, they'd only pass on about 35% of the income.

So currently the Palestinians are facing a 2.5 billion black hole, which doesn't allow them really to pay for anything.

They can't pay for their civil servants.

They can't pay for their public services.

They basically can't keep going because Israel has this financial problem.

a grip on their windpipes through Smotrich.

And then the final thing, which could actually collapse the entire system if Smotrich were allowed to get away with it, and everybody's gambling Netanyahu won't less him, is that the entire Palestinian economy depends on Israeli banks as the only way of getting money in and out.

And he might stop the letters which give indemnity to Israeli banks, which would basically destroy the entire banking system of Palestine.

And that would be the end of the entire Palestinian economy.

Now, the US Treasury, Trump putting pressure on Netanyahu and the hope is that Netanyahu isn't going to go that far.

And then there's the people bit because…

240,000 Palestinians worked in Israel and were sent back after October 7th.

None of them returned to work.