Israel, PNA agree on reviving economic cooperation

Israel and the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) agreed on resuming direct bilateral economic cooperation and widening their trade, Palestinian and Israeli official sources said Sunday. The agreement was made when Israeli Finance Minister Yair Lapid met on Sunday at his office in Jerusalem with the new PNA Minister of Finance, Shukri Bishara, Israel Radio reported. The Radio said the two sides agreed to resume economic cooperation to promote joint investments and expand bilateral trade. Meanwhile, a well-informed source in the Palestinian Ministry of Finance told Xinhua that both Israel and PNA agreed to revive the Special Technical Committees to pursue better trade chances. The committee was unilaterally suspended by Israel last November following the UN General Assembly resolution to upgrade the status of Palestine to a non-member observer state. The source said both sides agreed to reactivate a deal previously signed between Israel and the Palestinians according to which both sides can take measures to reduce the tax leakage in goods transportation. It meanwhile said that Lapid and Bishara discussed the establishment of a clearance zone between the two sides to enable the PNA to control imports and goods clearance, and they also agreed on a system to exchange the data related to goods imported from Israel. The meeting between Lapid and Bishara is the first held between an Israeli official and a minister in the new Palestinian government led by Prime Minister Rami Al-Hamdallah.