Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Make a matched gift and support Jewish journalism. DONATE NOW
Fast Forward

CIA Head Holds Secret Meeting With Mahmoud Abbas in West Bank

(JTA) — CIA director Mike Pompeo reportedly met secretly with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas at the P.A. headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

The meeting was held Tuesday, The Associated Press reported, citing two unnamed senior officials. The White House and the CIA declined to comment to the AP.

The talks came a day before the scheduled meeting in Washington, D.C., between President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Abbas reportedly briefed Pompeo on Palestinian positions ahead of the Trump-Netanyahu meeting. He also reportedly expressed concern about a statement made Tuesday night to reporters by a senior White House official that a two-state solution was not a necessary outcome of peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians.

It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!

This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions. 

We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.

As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday! 

Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:

  • Credit the Forward
  • Retain our pixel
  • Preserve our canonical link in Google search
  • Add a noindex tag in Google search

See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.