U.S. fears Israeli finance minister will topple Palestinian banks

The crash of the Palestinian banking system could bring down the Palestinian Authority, creating a power vacuum that could throw the West Bank into chaos and exacerbate the conflict in the region. Israel's finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, an ultranationalist anti-Palestinian settler, has taken many steps over the last two years to weaken the Palestinian Authority as part of his ideology of annexing the West Bank (Read more at Axios).