Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Report: Abbas Met With U.S. Businessmen to Establish Trump Back Channel

(JTA) — Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas met with American businessmen in Ramallah earlier this month in an attempt to set up a back channel for contacts with the incoming administration of Donald Trump.

On Jan. 2, Abbas met in Ramallah with hedge fund manager Daniel Arbess, who is Jewish, and with the Palestinian billionaire Adnan Mjalli, who owns businesses in the US and elsewhere, The Times of Israel reported Friday.

The purpose of the meeting was to set up an indirect diplomatic channel between Abbas and President-elect Donald Trump via the businessmen, the report said.

Arbess was dispatched to Ramallah to send messages to Abbas and relay his responses back to Washington, ahead of Trump’s inauguration on January 20. However, he was not directly sent by Trump.
Arbess is considered to be close to Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, who is expected to take up a senior White House role in the new administration.

During the meeting, Arbess convinced Abbas that Trump is serious about moving the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, according to Haaretz, which first reported on the meeting.

However, last week, Abbas told members of Israel’s left-wing Meretz party he did not believe Trump would move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem.

Also present at the meeting was senior Palestine Liberation Organization negotiator Saeb Erekat and Palestinian security chief Majed Faraj.

On Jan. 2, Abbas met in Ramallah with hedge fund manager Daniel Arbess, who is Jewish, and with the Palestinian billionaire Adnan Mjalli, who owns businesses in the US and elsewhere

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join 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 credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link 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.