US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen (archive from Reuters)
Israeli-Palestinian conflict
Yellen: Our goal is to contain the conflict and prevent it from spreading
US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said Thursday that our goal must be to contain conflict in the Middle East and prevent its expansion.
Yellen added: “We haven’t seen many global consequences of the Israel-Gaza war yet.”
He continued: “We have taken many measures to impose sanctions aimed at reducing sources of funding for Hamas, and we are looking for other ways to reduce funding flowing to Hamas,” according to Reuters.
He explained that we know large numbers of people have been killed in Gaza, and America has no independent confirmation of the numbers, adding: “My focus in the Israel-Gaza conflict is on tragedy and human suffering.”
He indicated that we need to speed up an inspection system for aid trucks entering Gaza.
A senior Israeli Finance Ministry official said Thursday that Israel will likely have to spend a larger sum to finance the war on the Palestinian Hamas movement than the Bank of Israel estimated this week, but the cost will not exceed what happened during the war against the Palestinian Hamas movement. the Covid-19 pandemic.
“I don’t think it will exceed what we spent during Covid, but I think they (in the central bank) are too optimistic” about the costs of the war, the official in the general accounting department of the ministry that manages public finances and debts, told reporters in a briefing.
The Central Bank on Monday estimated that the budget deficit will reach 2.3% of GDP in 2023 and 3.5% in 2024, in exchange for achieving a surplus in 2022 if the conflict remains limited to the Gaza Strip and not will extend to other fronts. .
Tether, the stablecoin exporter, announced the freezing of 32 cryptocurrency accounts containing funds worth more than $873,000.
The company said in a statement that these funds are linked to “terrorism and war” in Israel and Ukraine.
Tether did not provide details of who owned the accounts, when they were frozen, the nature of the assets associated with them, nor did it indicate which were linked to Ukraine and which to Israel.