The Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas announced Tuesday evening the resumption of its coordination with Israel, officially at a standstill since last May, a measure which should facilitate the daily life of Palestinians.
“In the light of Mahmoud Abbas’ international contacts (…) and given the written and verbal commitments we have received from the Israelis, we will resume relations where they were before May 19, 2020”, date of the announcement of the end of security coordination, said on Twitter the Minister of Civil Affairs, Hussein al-Sheikh.
Mahmoud Abbas had justified in May the end of security coordination to protest against the Israeli project, now suspended, to annex parts of the West Bank, Palestinian territory occupied by the Israeli army since 1967.
He said at the time that his government no longer felt bound by “all of its agreements and understandings with the American and Israeli governments, and all of its obligations based on those understandings and agreements, including those relating to security.”
This decision had notably had an impact on the coordination of transfers of Palestinian patients to Israeli hospitals.
By stopping its coordination with Israel, the Palestinian Authority had also stopped receiving transfers of taxes, in particular customs, collected by Israel on behalf of this institution.
Deprived of these revenues, the Palestinian Authority had to cut the salaries of its civil servants by 40% at a time when the Palestinian economy is slowing down due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Mr. Sheikh did not specify whether a return to Israeli-Palestinian relations before May 19 would also mean the resumption of tax transfers to the Palestinian Authority.
But in a videoconference interview with reporters in Washington, Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh said the Palestinian camp was resuming “contact with the Israelis on financial, health and political issues.”
Goodbye Trump, hello Biden
The announcement comes on the eve of the arrival in Israel of US foreign minister Mike Pompeo, whose administration had maintained strained relations with the Palestinians.
After President Donald Trump recognized the disputed city of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, the Palestinians cut ties with Washington.
The Palestinians, whose chief negotiator Saeb Erakat died last week of COVID-19, hailed Democrat Joe Biden’s victory in the US presidential election.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who sits in the occupied West Bank, said he was “looking forward to working” with the Biden team to “improve” US-Palestinian relations and ensure “justice and dignity” for Palestinians.
The Palestinians maintained a freeze on their coordination with Israel this summer when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that he was suspending his plan to annex parts of the West Bank.
The head of the Israeli government made the statement following the announcement of the normalization of relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, since joined by Bahrain and Sudan.
The Palestinians had cried out “betrayal”, believing that the normalization of relations between Israel and the Arab world was only possible after an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement.
The last direct talks between the two camps collapsed in 2014.
The Israelis have offered in recent months to discuss with the Palestinians on the basis of the Trump plan which calls for not only to make Jerusalem the capital of Israel but also to integrate nearly 30% of the West Bank into the Hebrew state.
The Palestinians want to make East Jerusalem the capital of the state they aspire to.
According to Mr. Shtayyeh, the Palestinians recently presented Israel with three options: negotiations under the aegis of the Quartet (UN, EU, Russia, United States), return to negotiations from where they left off in 2014 or the resumption of commitments already signed.
“It appears that Israel has chosen this third option,” said Shtayyeh, referring to the resumption of coordination between the two camps ahead of Joe Biden’s scheduled arrival in the White House in January.