Days before Tuesday’s pivotal Israeli election, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shocked his country by offering a bleak economic forecast that critics said could make Israel more like Iran, Russia and North Korea.
Mr. Netanyahu told an Israeli financial journalist on Friday that he was preparing for international sanctions against Israeli banks by drawing up plans for a “bypass economy” based on cryptocurrency. He also told Israelis to prepare for the end of billions of dollars of annual American assistance.
“It’s over,” he said. “It’s only a matter of time.”
The comments were a reflection of Israel’s deepening global isolation, with even once-staunch allies imposing or threatening economic sanctions and embargoes after years of war in Gaza and rampant violence by Jewish settlers against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.
With settlers advancing into areas that were previously off limits, Britain last month decried what it called “ethnic cleansing” and announced trade sanctions on settlements that it said would also apply to entities that financed their construction. Though Israel’s banking system has not been directly targeted by sanctions, a dozen countries, including Canada, France and Spain, have said they support restrictions on trade with settlements, raising the prospect of further penalties that could affect Israeli financial institutions.
Opponents of Mr. Netanyahu’s government decried his pronouncements, which also drew a rebuke from the generally reserved central bank.
“Crypto currencies cannot serve as a route to bypass sanctions against Israel,” the Bank of Israel said in a statement. The bank added that the government would do better “to focus on preventing sanctions” and preserving Israel’s economic ties with its main trading partners.
Commentators said that Mr. Netanyahu’s outlook sounded apocalyptic, and some said it was part of a scare campaign to improve his election prospects.
Last year, amid growing global condemnation of the Israeli military’s conduct of the war against Hamas in Gaza, where it has been accused of war crimes, and the imposition of some arms embargoes, he warned that Israel would have to become a more self-sufficient “super-Sparta.” That reference to the ancient, insular Greek city-state that practiced militaristic self-reliance was, to critics, a frightening scenario for a small country whose economy is largely driven by a tech sector that is reliant on foreign investment.
Gadi Eisenkot, Mr. Netanyahu’s main rival in Tuesday’s election, said in a social media post that the prime minister’s “Bibi-coin vision,” a nod to cryptocurrency, would “dismantle the Israeli economy for generations.”
“No internet purchases, no high-tech investments, no national security,” he added.
Yair Lapid, the opposition leader who has served as prime minister and finance minister, wrote on social media that a vote for Mr. Netanyahu was a vote for “a ruined economy, sanctions that will lead to insane price hikes, and no military alliance with the United States.”
And a former governor of the Bank of Israel, Jacob Frenkel, told Israel’s Channel 12 on Sunday that moving away from the international financial system would turn Israel into “a leper.”
Mr. Netanyahu later walked back his remarks slightly, saying that he had heard the criticism and that cryptocurrency was only one option to deal with potential financial sanctions.
In a somewhat jarring contrast, Mr. Netanyahu’s campaign has argued that Israel’s economy overall is healthy despite years of war, helped by record export revenues, relatively low inflation and unemployment, and a strong shekel.
But many Israelis are not feeling it. The State Comptroller, a government watchdog, warned last year that the cost of living was “skyrocketing” in part because of structural challenges in Israel’s consumer market and low competition levels.
While foreign affairs and national security have dominated the political conversation ahead of the election, a recent survey by the Israel Democracy Institute, a nonpartisan research group, found that the economy was the top issue for many voters heading into Tuesday.
