US hosted PA intelligence chief for meetings with CIA counterparts despite visa ban

WASHINGTON — The Palestinian Authority’s intelligence chief quietly held meetings in New York last week with counterparts from the Central Intelligence Agency, days after the Trump administration announced that it was barring entry to PA President Mahmoud Abbas and dozens of other Palestinian officials who were planning to attend the UN General Assembly later in September, two sources familiar with the matter told The Times of Israel.

PA General Intelligence Services head Majed Faraj used the meetings to convey to the administration that while Ramallah hopes Washington will reverse the visa bans, it will continue to work to maintain stability and combat terrorism in the West Bank, a Palestinian official and second source familiar with the matter said.

It was the latest demonstration of the PA’s efforts to remain in good standing with the Trump administration, even though the latter has spent much of its first eight months either largely ignoring Ramallah or taking measures against the PA and Palestinians.

Faraj’s meetings, along with his entry into the US alone, showed that Washington still wants to maintain some degree of ties with the PA, at least at the security level.

Last week’s sit-downs weren’t the only ones Faraj has had in the US since President Donald Trump returned to office in January. The PA intel chief met with CIA counterparts in Langley, Virginia, in late April.

Spokespeople for Faraj and the CIA did not respond to requests for comment.

Abbas had considered removing Faraj from the post he has held since 2009 as part of a broader shakeup of the PA’s security services earlier this year, but Faraj managed to weather those initial plans.

Abbas has made several overtures to the Trump administration, hoping to avoid the breakdown in ties that took place during the president’s first term.

But they have gone largely unnoticed, with Trump separating Gaza from the West Bank and the broader Israeli-Palestinian conflict as he works to end the war in the coastal enclave. Trump has not held a phone call with Abbas since returning to the White House.

The US also responded to several Western countries’ plans to recognize a Palestinian state at a September 22 conference at the UN ahead of the General Assembly’s high-level week by issuing visa bans against some 80 Palestinian officials.

Asked last week about the decision and whether the US views the PA as illegitimate, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio asserted that the PA “has its own set of problems.”

He highlighted Ramallah’s welfare system, which included payments to security prisoners based on the length of their sentence in Israeli jail.

But Abbas signed a decree in February that ended the policy and replaced it with a new one that grants stipends strictly based on financial need.

In June, the PA invited the US to certify that the new policy is now in place, though the Trump administration has yet to send a delegation to Ramallah.