By Anna Ahronheim, Tovah Lazaroff, and Lahav Harkov, Jerusalem Post— Israel will make a series of goodwill gestures to the Palestinian Authority, Defense Minister Benny Gantz said Monday after a rare meeting with PA President Mahmoud Abbas the night before in Ramallah. Among the economic gestures offered to Abbas was a NIS 500 million loan,…
By Arlene Bridges Samuels, CBN Israel— Decades before the COVID-19 pandemic swept across the world, prompting the widespread use of face masks, Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas had twisted together his own version of a mask—one that hid his lifelong motives and remade him into a credible world leader. Abbas controls the PA’s Fatah…
By Elliott Abrams, Pressure Points—- In January of this year, Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas did something that had not been done since 2006: scheduled an election. Indeed, he scheduled three: an election on 22 May for the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), the parliament for the West Bank that has been in suspension since 2007; an…
By Bassam Tawil, Gatestone Institute— One week after he entered the 17th year of his four-year term in office, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas finally announced new parliamentary and presidential elections, scheduled to take place in May and July 2021. His announcement was carefully timed to coincide with the inauguration week of President Joe Biden…
By Khaled Abu Toameh, JPost— In the context of his effort to improve Palestinian relations with the Arab countries, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas began a two-day visit to Qatar, where he met on Monday with the country’s emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani. Abbas’s visit, the first since November 2019, comes in the…
By Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger, “Second Thought: a US-Israel Initiative” According to a November 12, 2020 OpEd by Nabil Amr, a confidant of Mahmoud Abbas, published by the leading Saudi daily Asharq Al-Awsat : “Ballots with Biden’s name would have filled the boxes if placed in Ramallah…. bets are that Biden’s victory resume ties with…
By Elad Benari, Israel National News— The Palestinian Authority (PA) on Sunday started diplomatic steps to hold an international conference at the beginning of 2021 for the peace process with Israel, a senior official said, according to the Xinhua news agency. The PA mission to the United Nations has begun the preliminary steps with UN…
By Bassam Tawil, Gatestone Institute— The Palestinian Authority, after rejecting US President Donald Trump’s recently unveiled plan for Mideast peace, “Peace to Prosperity,” as a “conspiracy” against Palestinians, is now trying to persuade the Israeli public that it is “still” interested in achieving peace with Israel. Earlier this month, PA President Mahmoud Abbas announced that…
By Jeremy Sharon, Jerusalem Post— We need more Irish in Ramallah,” Likud MK Uzi Dayan told Labor-Gesher candidate Hilik Bar sharply on Wednesday, after the latter referenced the Good Friday Agreement of the Irish peace process as a model for conflict resolution. “What we need are leaders like Bertie Ahern and Tony Blair,” Bar shot…
By Earl Cox, Israel Always— President Donald Trump recently tweeted a clear, long overdue message to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas: you can’t have it both ways. Offended by Trump’s December speech, which clearly left Jerusalem’s final boundaries to be negotiated by both sides, Abbas overreacted with trademark false accusations, and a huffy rebuttal of…