Palestinians insist that there is no back channel with Washington
Is there or isn’t there a back channel of talks between the Palestinians and the US administration?
When Yasser Abed Rabbo led a four-man PLO delegation to meet with US Ambassador to Tunis Robert Peletru in 1988, the meeting was hailed as a huge breakthrough. After the 90-minute meeting, Abed Rabbo said, “We hope this dialogue will continue and we think it will continue.”
That first PLO-US meeting might be in the distant past now, but the current situation appears to be reversed. The American ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, is now claiming to have secret back-channel talks with the Palestinians; the Palestinians are denying this vehemently.
