Israel and United States to make up their relationship with Palestine
In early July, Israel’s Prime Minister, Yair Lapid and the Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas held a phone conversation, believed to be the first such contact between Israeli and Palestinian leaders for five years.
The two men discussed the continuation of cooperation and the need to ensure quiet and calm, according to Lapid’s office short statement. These two appear to have a relatively good relationship. As Lapid became Prime Minister, Abbas congratulated him while Lapid passed his best wishes to the Palestinian leader ahead of Eid al-Adha in this early month.
The Palestinian news agency, Wafa also reported the phone conversation, adding that President Abbas had expressed his wish that “peace and stability would prevail in the region as soon as possible“. Before Lapid, the late Prime Minister, right-winger Naftali Bennett chose not to speak at all with Abbas during his one-year incumbency. while long-time leader Benjamin Netanyahu oversaw a degradation of Israel’s relations with the Palestinian Authority, and it is reported he last spoke to the Palestinian leader in 2017.
On approaching Palestine, Israel recently changed their approach, Defense Minister Benny Gantz visited Abbas at his Ramallah office last week. During the meeting, the Palestinian leader “stressed the importance of creating a political horizon [and] commitment to the signed agreements,” Wafa reported according to CNN.
In another event, A statement from Gantz’s office said the meeting had discussed “security and civilian coordination ahead of the visit of US President Biden to Israel“. The US President, Joe Biden just recently visited West Bank to meet with Abbas, making this travel plan his first visit since 2017. The White House hopes the meeting will help draw a line under the significant breakdown in US-Palestinian relations seen under the Trump administration. Biden’s voyage to Palestine planned to announce $100 million in aid to Palestinian hospitals in East Jerusalem during his visit to the Middle East, five Israeli officials tell Axios.
According to France 24, Palestinians had hoped the US president would finally make good on a promise to re-open a consulate for Palestinians in Jerusalem. Reopening the mission could serve as a “shot in the arm” for the peace process, said another Palestinian official speaking anonymously. But the US leader offered no substantive plan to redress Israel’s occupation, even side-stepping Jewish settlement expansion in the West Bank, an issue highlighted by former president Barack Obama’s administration, in which Biden served as vice president.