Israel’s defense minister has met Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas for a rare high-level meeting, but a source close to Prime Minister Naftali Bennett insisted Monday his government had no plans to reboot peace talks.
Defense Minister Benny Gantz met Abbas in Ramallah for what were reportedly the first direct talks between an Israeli cabinet member and the 86-year-old Palestinian leader in several years.
The meeting, which Gantz’s office said focused on “security policy, civilian and economic issues,” came just hours after Bennett returned from Washington where he met US President Joe Biden.
Biden said he would urge Bennett to find ways “to advance peace and security and prosperity for Israelis and Palestinians.”
According to a defense ministry statement, Gantz told Abbas that Israel “seeks to take measures that will strengthen the PA’s economy.”
“They also discussed shaping the security and economic situations in the West Bank and in Gaza,” and agreed to “continue communicating further,” it added.
A source close to Bennett said the meeting that he had approved focused on “issues between the defense establishment and the Palestinian Authority.”
“There is no peace process with the Palestinians nor will there be,” under Bennett’s leadership, said the source who requested anonymity.
The Gantz-Abbas meeting included the head of the Israeli military branch responsible for civil affairs in the Palestinian territories, Ghasan Alyan, senior PA official Hussein Al Sheikh and Palestinian intelligence chief Majid Faraj.
Gantz’s office said he and Abbas had held “a one-on-one meeting” after the broader talks.
Al Sheikh confirmed the meeting on Twitter but the PA was not immediately available to comment on its substance.
Bennett, 49, took office in June as head of an eclectic coalition in which his hawkish party holds only a handful of seats.
He is a long-standing opponent of Palestinian statehood and the former head of a council that lobbies for Jewish settlers in the West Bank, a territory occupied by Israel since 1967.
Jewish settlements in the West Bank are considered illegal under international law.
But despite Bennett’s personal views, his government has sought to warm ties with the PA, which had effectively collapsed under former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in power from 2009 until June this year.
Netanyahu, also a pro-settlement right-winger long reviled by Palestinians, further alienated Abbas through his tight embrace of former US president Donald Trump, accused of extreme pro-Israel bias.
