U.S. President Donald Trump’s Special Representative to International Negotiations, Jason Greenblatt, is to arrive Monday in Israel to continue the president’s goal of reviving the moribund final status negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
“This trip is an interim visit as talks continue about potential next steps,” a White House official said. “President Trump has made it clear that working toward achieving a lasting peace agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians is a top priority for him.”
The envoy is scheduled to meet with U.S. Ambassador to Israel David M. Friedman at the start of the week, and then Wednesday is slated to meet with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Greenblatt is also expected to meet at some point with Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas.
But the envoy was already laying the groundwork for this trip on Friday with a tweet noting, “cooperation between Israeli emergency force services and Palestinian Civil Defense Forces shows how public safety unites.” The two forces were apparently quietly training together last week in an exercise intended to improve coordination of rescue work between the two services, who often come into contact with each other in Judea and Samaria.
The Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) said the exercise was aimed at enhancing their performance and “learning from one another to better their functioning and response rate for real time events.”
The Israeli Fire Brigade Commander said after the drill was complete, “I was deeply impressed by the commitment and the professionalism of the Palestinian Emergency Services,” according to COGAT Maj.-Gen. Yoav Mordechai.