US ambassador to the UN meets with Palestinian diplomats in New York

US Ambassador to the UN Mike Waltz met on Tuesday with a delegation of Palestinian diplomats in New York to discuss the Security Council resolution that Washington is looking to pass in order to establish an International Stabilization Force to help secure postwar Gaza, a Palestinian official tells The Times of Israel.

The meeting was a rare example of direct engagement between US and Palestinian officials and perhaps the first such sit-down on US soil since President Donald Trump’s return to the White House.

Washington issued a visa ban preventing Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas from attending a UN conference promoting the two-state solution in September, and the handful of known meetings between officials from Washington and Ramallah have taken place in the Middle East.

The Palestinian delegation used the meeting to try and make the case for edits to the text of the US-sponsored Security Council resolution that would tie the PA more directly to the ISF and the technocratic government that the Trump administration envisions will run postwar Gaza, the Palestinian official says, confirming a report in the Axios news site.

Earlier drafts of the resolution have limited the PA’s role to the hand-off of Gaza’s control from the ISF and the unaffiliated technocratic government, once Ramallah has undergone significant reforms.