Israeli Defence Minister Benny Gantz and Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas held talks in Ramallah to prepare for US President Joe Biden’s visit to the region, Israeli officials said Friday.
The rare meeting late Thursday, coming six months after the two officials held talks in Israel, was to mark the Muslim feast of Eid al-Adha and “discuss security and civilian coordination ahead of the visit of US President Biden to Israel,” Gantz’s office said in a brief statement.
“The meeting was conducted in positive terms. The parties discussed regional civilian and security challenges (and) agreed to continue security coordination and to avoid activities that may cause instability,” Gantz’s office said.
Abbas “stressed the importance of creating a political horizon” between Israelis and Palestinians and “the need to create a (positive) atmosphere before the visit of President Biden,” the official Palestinian news agency WAFA said.
Abbas and Gantz, a former army chief of staff who heads the centrist Blue and White party, met in December in Israel, sparking a heated debate in Israeli political circles.
Their new meeting in Ramallah, headquarters of the Palestinian Authority in the occupied West Bank, comes less than a week before Biden visits as part of his first Middle East tour as US president.
Biden is due to visit Israel and the occupied West Bank from July 13 to 15, and will hold talks with new Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid and Abbas before heading to Saudi Arabia.
Lapid’s predecessor as prime minister, Naftali Bennett, then head of the radical right-wing Yamina party, refused to meet Abbas.
After a visit to Paris this week, where he met French President Emmanuel Macron, Lapid said he did not rule out a meeting with Abbas, but said it was “not a priority” in the run-up to Israeli elections on November 1.