Bowing to international pressure, Israel announced on 15 May that it would resume the transfer of tax revenues to the Palestinian Authority (PA). The transfer of USD88 million in revenues was suspended in the aftermath of the 4 May announcement of the Fatah-Hamas reconciliation agreement. In a statement on 15 May, Israeli Minister of Finance Yuval Steinitz said: "For the last two weeks, we gave the PA a yellow card, but we decided to renew the revenue transfers after we got confirmation from the Palestinians that no money will be transferred to Hamas or to terrorist operations." However, Steinitz also said: "Israel reserves the right to stop the transfer of revenues once again if, in the next few months, Hamas will become part of the Palestinian government." Israel has been under pressure from the United States and other members of the diplomatic quartet to the peace process (Russia, the UN and EU) to unblock the revenues, which provide the PA with between USD1 billion and USD 1.4 billion a year.
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