OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Israel's top diplomat held an
official meeting Sunday evening with a Palestinian minister, the latter said,
the first such encounter between Israel’s current foreign minister and a
Palestinian official.
اضافة اعلان
"I met this evening with Israeli Foreign Minister Yair
Lapid and we discussed several political and bilateral issues,"
Palestinian civil affairs
minister Hussein Al-Sheikh said on Twitter.
"I have highlighted the need for a political horizon
between the two parties based on international legitimacy," he added,
without saying where the encounter took place.
The Israeli foreign ministry declined to comment to AFP but
did not deny that the meeting took place.
In late December, Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz
hosted talks with Mahmoud Abbas on the Palestinian president's first visit to
Israel for an official meeting since 2010.
At that time, Israel's defense ministry announced
"confidence-building measures" with the
Palestinian Authority (PA).
These included a $32 million advance payment to the PA in
taxes collected on its behalf by Israel, and the granting of 600 extra permits
allowing Palestinian businessmen to cross into Israel.
It also announced the regularization of 6,000 more
Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank, which has been under Israeli
control since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
Sheikh had welcomed Abbas' meeting with Gantz, saying at the
time that it had been a "serious and courageous effort" towards a
"political" solution.
After Israel's coalition government led by Prime Minister
Naftali Bennett was formed in June, Gantz visited the PA's headquarters in the
West Bank city of Ramallah in August for talks with Abbas, the first official
meeting at such a level for several years.
Right-winger Bennett leads a motley coalition of parties
ranging from the Jewish nationalist right to the center and left, and includes
an Israeli Arab party for the first time.
After those talks, hawkish Bennett, the former head of a
settler lobby group who opposes Palestinian statehood, underlined that there
was no peace process under way with the Palestinians, "and there won't be
one".
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