Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz, Regional Cooperation Minister Issawi Freij and Knesset member Michal Rozin met Oct. 3 in Ramallah with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. All three are members of the left-wing Meretz party.
The encounter was the second such meeting to take place between senior Israelis and Palestinians since the formation of the Bennett government. Defense Minister Benny Gantz had met with Abbas in Ramallah last August, in a first high-level Israeli meeting with the Palestinian leader in almost a decade. After their meeting, Gantz announced a series of goodwill gestures to aid the Palestinian Authority (PA). Horowitz, Freij and Environmental Protection Minister Tamar Zandberg had held a number of meetings with Palestinian counterparts and senior PA officials in recent months, for establishing cooperation in different domains, including the coronavirus pandemic.
Horowitz said after the Oct. 3 meeting with Abbas that his party was working to “keep the two-state solution alive” within Israel’s current government. “Do not let it disappear, and do not sabotage the chance of reaching it in the future, because there is no other solution,” he noted. Horowitz also tweeted, “We have a common mission: to maintain hope for peace, based on the two-state solution. Because there is no other solution. Tonight in Ramallah, with the president of the Palestinian Authority, we took another step to deepen cooperation with our closest and most important neighbors.”
Rozin, who also serves as chairwoman of Meretz, said, "We came here [to Ramallah] openly, we did not hide, on the contrary, we came proudly. We will do all that is necessary to advance the two-state solution in order to build the practical foundations for peace."
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