At the meeting, PA civil affairs head Hussein al-Sheikh condemned the Beersheba attack that killed four Israelis.
Public Security Minister Omer Bar Lev met with Palestinian Authority Civil Affairs head Hussein al-Sheikh, only 30 minutes after the terror attack in Beersheba on Tuesday, KAN News reported.
Sheikh, considered one of the leading figures in the PA after president Mahmoud Abbas, was ‘deeply disturbed’ by the attack that killed four Israelis, according to the report.
Despite Sheikh’s personal condemnation to Bar Lev, the Palestinian Authority did not publicly condemn the Beersheba attack.
The meeting, reportedly planned ahead of the attack, was delayed by 20 minutes, according to KAN’s report, due to Bar Lev holding a situational assessment with Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Israel Police chief Kobi Shabtai shortly after news of the terror attack broke.
The meeting came as both the Israeli security establishment and the PA are working to deescalate tensions between Palestinian rioters and Israeli security forces ahead of Ramadan.
Earlier this week, it was reported Jordan’s King Abdullah II is set to meet with Abbas next week in Ramallah in an effort to calm the West Bank during Ramadan month.
The Palestinian civil affairs head previously met with Foreign Minister Yair Lapid in January, in what was Lapid’s first public meeting with a Palestinian figure. Following the meeting, Sheikh tweeted he and the foreign minister discussed “several political and bilateral issues.”
Sheikh, who has been serving since 2007 as head of the PA General Authority of Civil Affairs, has become the official spokesman of the PA in both the local and international arenas since the death of former PLO chief negotiator and secretary-general Saeb Erekat in 2020.
As reported by The Jerusalem Post