A short statement from Lapid’s office said the two men “talked about continued cooperation and the need to ensure quiet and calm.”
Abbas congratulated Lapid on becoming Prime Minister, the statement said, while Lapid extended his best wishes to the Palestinian leader ahead of Eid al-Adha, the Muslim holiday that begins on Friday.
The Palestinian Wafa news agency also reported the call, adding that President Abbas had expressed his wish that “peace and stability would prevail in the region as soon as possible.”
Lapid’s predecessor, right winger Naftali Bennett, chose not to speak to Abbas during his 12 months as prime minister, while longtime leader Benjamin Netanyahu oversaw the deterioration of Israel’s relations with the Palestinian Authority , and it was reported the last time he spoke to the Palestinians. leader in 2017.
Highlighting the changed approach of the current Israeli government, Defense Minister Benny Gantz visited Abbas at the Ramallah office on Thursday night.
During the meeting, the Palestinian leader “emphasized the importance of creating a political horizon [and] Wafa reported, referring to a series of agreements signed between the two sides in the 1990s.
As well as Israel, Biden will also visit the West Bank next week, where he will meet Abbas – in the first meeting between the Palestinian leader and the US President since 2017. The White House hopes the meeting will help pull it out. a boundary. under the significant breakdown in US-Palestinian relations under the Trump administration.
In a separate development earlier this week, Abbas traveled to Algeria to meet Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, also for the first time in several years.
Algeria’s state news agency reported that the meeting was held on the sidelines of the 60th anniversary of Algeria’s independence.
Relations between Abbas’s Fatah party, Palestine’s largest faction, and Hamas, the Islamist group that runs Gaza, have been strained for years. In June 2007, the two groups openly clashed with each other, in a riot that ended the Palestinian Authority’s control of Gaza.
