JERUSALEM — Israel has decided to transfer to the Palestinian Authority the tax and customs revenue that Israel collected last month on the authority’s behalf, to help ease the authority’s economic crisis, a senior Israeli government official said on Wednesday.

The decision reversed an earlier one to withhold the revenue and use it to offset some of what the Palestinians owe to Israeli utility companies. That step was meant to punish the Palestinians after their successful bid in November to upgrade their status at the United Nations to that of a nonmember observer state.

The Israeli official said the decision to release the blocked money was “a one-time event” and was “not an indication of what Israel might do next month.”

It came after a meeting on Monday between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Tony Blair, the former prime minister of Britain, who is now a joint Middle East peace envoy for the United States, the European Union, the United Nations and Russia, known as the quartet. In a statement after the meeting, Mr. Blair and Mr. Netanyahu pledged to work on peace and security issues.