Israel, PA deny Palestinian delegation met with Netanyahu
Palestinian media reports say two sides met in Jerusalem to discuss ‘calming the situation’

Israel and the Palestinian Authority denied on Thursday reports that a PA delegation comprising senior intelligence officials met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem a day earlier to discuss ways to calm the situation in the West Bank.
Netanyahu’s Arab-language spokesman, Ofir Gendelman, told The Times of Israel that “no such meeting has taken place.”
General Adnan Damiri, spokesman of the Palestinian security services, said: “The reports are false and based on an erroneous interpretation of statements made by Fatah central committee member Mohammed Shtayyeh.”
“Dr. Shtayyeh decided to form a delegation to meet with the Israeli side and to convey the Central Committee’s opinion regarding Israeli violations,” Damiri told The Times of Israel, but stressed that there were “no arrangements for a delegation to meet with Netanyahu.”
The meeting was reported by Palestinian media to have taken place in Jerusalem and to have included Majed Faraj, director of the PA’s General Intelligence Service, and Ziad Hab al-Rieh, head of the PA preventative security services.
The reports said that the meeting discussed steps for calming the situation in the West Bank and restoring the situation there to how it was before the outbreak of the current wave of violence in October. The delegates also reportedly discussed with Netanyahu ways to improve the economic situation in the West Bank.
Delegates were said to have described the meeting, which lasted approximately two hours, as “positive.”
Two weeks ago Faraj told Defense News that his agency was actively working with Israel and had foiled some 200 attacks against Israelis since October 2015.
“We are sure that violence, radicalization and terrorism will hurt us. It won’t bring us closer to achieving our dream of a Palestinian state,” he told the magazine in what he said was his first media interview.
“We fought for many decades in a different way; and now we are fighting for peace… So I will continue fighting to keep this bridge against radicalization and violence that should lead us to our independence.”