Prime Minister Bennett should speak with PA leader Abbas – editorial

The signals from Prime Minister Naftali Bennett that he has no plans to meet Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas do not augur well. It is in Israel’s strategic interest for Bennett to put politics aside and invite Abbas for talks as soon as possible, not only to establish a high-level dialogue to discuss issues of bilateral interest and provide hope for future peace negotiations but also – if necessary – to stand together to prevent war and violence.

Bennett’s spokesman dismissed reports on Wednesday that the prime minister would attend a summit in Cairo with Abbas, Egyptian President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi and Jordanian King Abdullah.

The London-based Arabic newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat had reported that Bennett had been “disinvited” from what would have been a quadrilateral meeting in Egypt. The spokesman clarified that while Bennett is scheduled to travel soon to Cairo to meet with Sisi, no date has been set yet for the meeting.

Abbas traveled to Cairo on Wednesday for the trilateral meeting with Sisi and King Abdullah. Palestinian official Azzam al-Ahmed said that the three Arab leaders would discuss coordinated positions ahead of Abbas’s address to the UN General Assembly later this month.

Contacts were also under way to hold an Arab summit to discuss the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he added.

The Cairo summit takes place days after Defense Minister Benny Gantz met Abbas in Ramallah late Sunday night. It was the first high-level meeting between the sides in close to a decade, and Gantz promised that Israel would make a series of goodwill gestures to the PA, including a NIS 500 million loan.

The summit also comes a week after Bennett had his first meeting with President Joe Biden in Washington, where he made clear that he had no intention of meeting with Abbas or engaging in peace negotiations on a future Palestinian state.

“There is no diplomatic process with the Palestinians, nor will there be one,” a source close to Bennett insisted after the Abbas-Gantz meeting, for which he had to give his approval.

This statement is unwise and offensive to the ears of the US and the international community. Why would an Israeli prime minister oppose a diplomatic process with the Palestinians?

Bennett does not have to support a Palestinian state, but there are other important issues to address for the sake of both Israelis and Palestinians.

For example, what if Hamas decides to launch a new war from Gaza? Shouldn’t the Israeli and Palestinian leaders establish a direct channel of communications, and join forces against any aggression that threatens both peoples, peace and stability? What if Hamas were to make a move to establish control over the West Bank, or to once again fan the flames of violence and unrest inside Israel or the West Bank, as it did in May during the last IDF operation in the Gaza Strip?

Wouldn’t it be beneficial for Israel’s prime minister to be able to talk directly to the leader of the Palestinian Authority?

The US has been the main broker for past Israeli-Palestinian talks, the last round of which came in 2014. But so far Biden has not shown any interest in kick-starting a new process.

In a Zoom talk to the Nizami Ganjavi International Center on Tuesday, PA Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh declared that “Washington does not have a peace initiative at all.”

The new Israeli government, he said, “has no political platform and no initiative to end the conflict with us. It seems to me that all it cares for is to maintain the status quo, and all of us know that the status quo is unsustainable,” adding that this “political vacuum… is very dangerous.”

Shtayyeh concluded that the vacuum “needs to be filled with some initiative. The US does not have an initiative, Europe does not have an initiative, the Israelis have no idea how to end the conflict with us… and Arab countries are going in a totally different direction.”

Unfortunately, Shtayyeh is right. We urge the prime minister to pick up the phone and schedule a meeting with Abbas at his earliest convenience.

A strong PA is in Israel’s interest. Bennett needs to keep that in mind.