The Bank of Israel (Hebrew: בנק ישראל‎ Arabic: بنك إسرائيل‎) is the central bank of Israel. It is located in Kiryat HaMemshala in Jerusalem, with a branch office in Tel Aviv. The current governor is Stanley Fischer.

When Israel declared independence in 1948, the power of note issuance was vested with the Anglo-Palestine Bank, which was refounded as Bank Leumi in 1950. Monetary policy and banking supervision remained controlled by the Ministry of Finance.

The Bank of Israel was founded on August 24, 1954, when the Knesset passed the Bank of Israel Act, which ceded the currency issuing and regulatory functions of the Ministry of Finance to the newly formed Bank. Control over foreign currency exchange was not given to the bank until 1978. The Bank was made completely independent in 1985 and since 1992, the Bank manages its monetary policy so as to meet the inflation target set by the Israeli government - which is today a range of between 1 and 3 percent per annum, considered as price stability. Additionally, the Bank manages the Foreign Exchange Reserves.

Coordinates: 31°N 35°E / 31°N 35°E / 31; 35

Israel, officially the State of Israel ( /ˈɪzriːəl/ or  /ˈɪzreɪəl/; Hebrew: מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל‎, Medīnat Yisrā'el, IPA: [me̞diˈnät jisʁäˈʔe̞l] ( listen); Arabic: دَوْلَة إِسْرَائِيل‎, Dawlat Isrāʼīl, IPA: [dawlat ʔisraːˈʔiːl]), is a parliamentary republic in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. It borders Lebanon in the north, Syria in the northeast, Jordan and the West Bank in the east, Egypt and the Gaza Strip on the southwest, and the Gulf of Aqaba in the Red Sea to the south, and it contains geographically diverse features within its relatively small area. Israel is defined as a Jewish and Democratic State in its Basic Laws and is the world's only Jewish-majority state.

Following the adoption of a resolution by the General Assembly of the United Nations on 29 November 1947 recommending the adoption and implementation of the United Nations plan to partition Palestine, on 14 May 1948 David Ben-Gurion, the Executive Head of the World Zionist Organization and president of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, declared the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz Israel, to be known as the State of Israel, a state independent from the British Mandate for Palestine. Neighboring Arab states invaded the next day in support of the Palestinian Arabs. Israel has since fought several wars with neighboring Arab states, in the course of which it has occupied the West Bank, Sinai Peninsula, Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights. Portions of these territories, including east Jerusalem, have been annexed by Israel, but the border with the neighboring West Bank has not yet been permanently defined.^{[neutrality is disputed]} Israel has signed peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan, but efforts to resolve the Israeli–Palestinian conflict have so far not resulted in peace.

Stanley "Stan" Fischer (Hebrew: סטנלי פישר‎; born 1943) is an American-Israeli economist and the current Governor of the Bank of Israel. He previously served as Chief Economist at the World Bank.

Born in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) on 15 October 1943, he obtained his B.Sc. and M.Sc. at the London School of Economics from 1962–1966 and his Ph.D. at MIT in 1969, all in economics.

He was a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management from 1977 to 1988, where he authored three popular economics textbooks, Macroeconomics (with Rüdiger Dornbusch and Richard Startz), Lectures on Macroeconomics (with Olivier Blanchard), and the introductory Economics, with David Begg and Rüdiger Dornbusch. He was also Ben Bernanke's and Greg Mankiw's Ph.D. thesis advisor.

From January 1988 to August 1990 he was Vice President, Development Economics and Chief Economist at the World Bank. He then became the First Deputy Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), from September 1994 until the end of August 2001. By the end of 2001, Fischer had joined the influential Washington-based financial advisory body, the Group of Thirty. After leaving the IMF, he served as Vice Chairman of Citigroup, President of Citigroup International, and Head of the Public Sector Client Group. Fischer worked at Citigroup from February, 2002 to April, 2005. He became Governor of the Bank of Israel on May 1, 2005, replacing David Klein, who ended his term on January 16, 2005. Fischer became an Israeli citizen, the aforementioned action being a prerequisite to this appointment. He has been involved in the past with the Bank of Israel, having served as an American government adviser to Israel's economic stabilization program in 1985. On May 2, 2010, Fischer was sworn in for a second term.