In first since Trump’s return, PA intel chief to meet CIA officials in Washington
Majed Faraj in US for medical procedure, but will use opportunity to meet with American counterparts and bolster his standing amid Abbas plan to replace him
Jacob Magid is The Times of Israel's US bureau chief
The Palestinian Authority’s intelligence chief Majed Faraj is slated to meet with CIA counterparts in Washington this week for the first time since Donald Trump returned to the White House, a US official and a Palestinian official told The Times of Israel.
Contact between the Trump administration and Ramallah has been limited, but the US has maintained some of its funding for the PA’s security forces, despite a near-complete freeze on foreign assistance, the US official said.
Faraj is in the US to undergo a medical procedure but is using the opportunity to tack on work meetings at Langley, as he seeks to boost his standing amid an ongoing shakeup within the PA that on Saturday saw President Mahmoud Abbas appoint longtime loyalist Hussein al-Sheikh as his deputy, two other sources familiar with the matter explained.
Spokespeople for Faraj and the CIA did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
While Faraj has historically maintained a close relationship with Abbas, those ties soured over the past year amid the PA president’s frustration with the PA security force’s inability to crack down on armed groups in the northern West Bank. The PA launched an unprecedented counterterror operation in Jenin last year and made hundreds of arrests, but the IDF found the effort to be insufficient and launched a much larger campaign that is still ongoing.
Last month, a European diplomat and a Palestinian source familiar with the matter told The Times of Israel that Abbas was planning to replace Faraj, who has been head of the PA’s General Intelligence Service since 2009.
Abbas is facing mounting pressure from Arab and Western allies to reform the Palestinian Authority and make way for a new generation of leaders so that the PA is better equipped to potentially take on the larger task of once again governing Gaza after the war there ends. After Israel unilaterally left Gaza in 2005, Hamas violently took power in the Strip in 2007, pushing out Abbas’s Fatah faction.
Last March, Abbas fired all of his ministers and formed a new cabinet led by Prime Minister Mohammed Mustafa, another longtime ally. In recent months and weeks, he has replaced the heads of the PA’s Security Forces, Preventive Security Service, police and civil defense. Three of those four agencies are now headed by former senior members of Abbas’s security detail.
Faraj is the last security chief to remain in his post, and the European diplomat said the intel chief is hoping to avoid the fate of his now-former counterparts. At the very least, Faraj is hoping to shift to a spot on the Palestine Liberation Organization’s powerful Executive Committee or play a key role in the postwar management of Gaza.
Nurit Yohanan contributed to this report.
The Times of Israel Community.