Top Biden aide to sit down with Palestinian president Friday: Official

By Michael Hernandez

WASHINGTON (AA) - US President Joe Biden's national security advisor will sit down with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas for talks on Friday, according to a senior Biden administration official.

The official, who spoke to reporters on condition of anonymity, said Jake Sullivan will meet with Abbas and other senior Palestinian officials in the West Bank city of Ramallah to discuss the conditions for ensuring "that we never see what happened on Oct. 7 happen again," as well as "our historic support for the Palestinian Authority."

Discussions are expected to center primarily on stability in the West Bank as well as plans for "what comes next" in the besieged Gaza Strip following the conclusion of Israel's war there.

"We expect to have a very good conversation with the Palestinian Authority," he said Thursday evening Washington time.

Israel began its war in Gaza in retaliation for a surprise cross-border attack by the Palestinian group Hamas on Oct. 7 in which over 1,200 people were killed and an estimated 239 others taken back to Gaza as hostages, according to official figures.

At least 18,787 Palestinians have since been killed in Gaza, nearly two-thirds of whom have been women and children, according to official figures from Gaza’s health authorities.

The official said the Palestinian Authority’s security forces were able to thwart efforts by Hamas to foment an uprising in the wake of its cross-border attack.

"Hamas cells in the West Bank tried to instigate violence and uprising in the days after Oct. 7, and that actually failed because the Palestinian security forces actually performed incredibly well," he said.

"So we'll talk about the Palestinian security forces, we'll talk about efforts we are doing to rein in violent extremist settler violence, which we've been very vocal about and we will continue to be, and also the capacity of the Palestinian Authority, which we recognize needs to be revamped, revitalized," he added.

The US is currently mulling the possibility of using some of the Palestinian Authority's security personnel in Gaza after the war ends to form what the official described as a "sort of nucleus" for Gaza.

The official cautioned, however, that "this is something we are discussing with the Palestinians and with the Israelis and with regional partners, and very much remains a work in progress."

The meeting will come amid escalated Israeli incursion operations and arrests in towns and cities across the West Bank and soaring attacks by right-wing Israeli settlers in the occupied territory and their forcible confiscations of Palestinian property.

Nearly 300 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since Oct. 7.