Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon traveled to the seat of the Palestinian government in the West Bank city of Ramallah on Oct. 29 to meet with Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah. According to reports of the meeting, the two discussed advancing civic administration and economic measures and Israeli-Palestinian cooperation. This is the second time within five months that Kahlon has gone to Palestinian Authority (PA) territory to meet with Hamdallah, and this time, too, the meeting was the result of US pressure on Israel to offer the Palestinians goodwill economic gestures.

The previous meeting, held late in the evening of May 31, was ostensibly to brief the Palestinians about a series of economic measures approved by the Israeli defense Cabinet 10 days earlier in a bid to curry favor with President Donald Trump on the eve of his visit to Israel and the Palestinian town of Bethlehem. The economic package was approved by majority vote despite the objections of the HaBayit HaYehudi party, which is part of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.

At the time, Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories Maj. Gen. Yoav Mordechai accompanied Kahlon to Ramallah. The two informed the Palestinians about the Cabinet decision, which they had already heard in detail from Israeli media in real time 10 days before the presidential visit.

And what has happened since? “Not much,” a senior source in the office of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas told Al-Monitor, speaking on condition of anonymity. At the May 31 meeting, he said, the main issue on the agenda was the Palestinian housing crisis in the Israeli-controlled Area C of the West Bank, “but the Cabinet’s decision [on the issue] was deliberately vague so that nothing came of it.”