Netanyahu tells Israelis to brace for sanctions, suggests crypto workaround

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned that Israel should prepare for international banking sanctions and suggested cryptocurrency could help the country get around them, just four days before the Knesset election. Speaking to Channel 10 on Friday, Netanyahu said Israel needed “an economy that can circumvent” sanctions, adding: “I’m working on that as well.” He said he had asked advisers to draw up a plan to use blockchain. The remarks follow Britain and 11 other Western countries announcing sanctions on goods from Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, citing settler attacks on Palestinians and large-scale settlement expansion approved by Netanyahu’s government. Netanyahu framed the economic outlook as outside Israel’s control. He also said multibillion-dollar US weapons packages “won’t keep coming”, insisting “America has changed. Not because Israel has.”