Secret talks between Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s senior adviser and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas have been ongoing for the past two months to reduce tensions in the West Bank.
According to foreign media, there were no reports about these talks before.
These are high-level contacts between Israel’s new government and Palestine.
The White House was briefed on the back-channel talks, but it is unclear whether all political parties in Netanyahu’s coalition government are aware of the talks.
After the swearing in of the new Israeli government, Palestinian Minister of Civil Affairs Hussain al-Sheikh sent a message to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s office through the Biden administration that Palestine is ready to work with the new prime minister.
Hussain al-Sheikh is also the Secretary General of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which sent a message of negotiations to Israel.
Prime Minister Netanyahu accepted Palestine’s offer and appointed National Security Adviser Zachi Hanegbe for secret negotiations with Palestine.
In the first few weeks, the talks focused on day-to-day issues to gradually normalize the tense situation in the West Bank.
Israel’s national security adviser and the Palestinian minister had several telephone conversations.
According to foreign media reports, the last meeting between the two personalities took place recently.
In this meeting, reconciliation talks were held to suspend the voting on the resolution presented in the United Nations Security Council against Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
A senior Israeli official says that although the back-channel talks cannot finalize the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, they are necessary to maintain communication between the leaders of both sides.
setTimeout(function(){
!function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s)
{if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function(){n.callMethod?
n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)};
if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version=’2.0′;
n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0;
t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];
s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window,document,’script’,
‘https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js’);
fbq(‘init’, ‘836181349842357’);
fbq(‘track’, ‘PageView’);
}, 6000);
/*setTimeout(function(){
(function (d, s, id) {
var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];
if (d.getElementById(id)) return;
js = d.createElement(s);
js.id = id;
js.src = “//connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.11&appId=580305968816694”;
fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);
}(document, ‘script’, ‘facebook-jssdk’));
}, 4000);*/