The American news website, Axios, quoted Israeli officials and a former US official as saying that the administration of President Joe Biden had proposed the idea of holding a meeting between senior Palestinian and Israeli officials, provided that the meeting be at the level of security advisors, and focus on security and economic cooperation between Tel Aviv and the National Authority. Palestinian.
The site added that US officials had presented the idea of meeting to Israelis, Palestinians, Egyptians and Jordanians several times in the past four months, and the Israeli side did not express any rejection of the idea, but it expressed reservations about it.
The White House suggested holding a meeting between the national security advisers in Israel and the Palestinian Authority, with the support of Washington, Cairo and Amman, and an Israeli official and a former American official told Axios that the office of Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett expressed reservations about the idea of a Palestinian-Israeli meeting, including his refusal to enter into any negotiations-like meetings. politics with the Palestinian side.
Israeli decision
Bennett's government, which includes a mixture of right-wing and left-wing parties, had decided not to participate in any peace initiatives with the Palestinian Authority, given the state of division within the Israeli government on this issue.
According to the American news site, the proposal to hold a meeting between Palestinian and Israeli security officials, with the participation of Egypt and Jordan, allows the Israeli Prime Minister to say that it is not about starting political negotiations between Tel Aviv and the Authority.
However, the American proposal faces new major obstacles, which is the Bennett government's loss of the majority in Parliament (Knesset) yesterday, Wednesday, after the resignation of one of the members of the ruling bloc, which does not leave the Israeli Prime Minister a margin of action to hold the meeting proposed by the American administration.
It should be noted that peace talks collapsed between the Palestinian and Israeli sides in 2014, after Tel Aviv retracted the release of the fourth batch of former prisoners detained prior to the signing of the Oslo Agreement (in 1993) and its non-acceptance of halting settlements, and all Washington's attempts to revive peace negotiations between the two parties failed. In light of Tel Aviv's rejection of the two-state solution and the continuation of the settlement policy.