Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday discussed with a Russian envoy a Moscow proposal to organize a meeting with Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas.

Netanyahu’s office said he was open to such a meeting after he held talks in Jerusalem with Mikhail Bogdanov, President Vladimir Putin’s Middle East envoy.

They “discussed President Putin’s proposal to host a face-to-face meeting between the prime minister and president Abbas in Moscow,” Netanyahu’s office said in a statement.

Abbas’s office has said the Palestinians are ready to participate in any “peace initiative” aimed at a “comprehensive and fair solution”.

But Palestinian leaders also say years of negotiations with the Israelis have not ended the occupation of the West Bank, and they have more recently pursued an international strategy.

They say an Abbas-Netanyahu meeting would lead nowhere without a freeze on Israeli settlement building, the release of Palestinian prisoners and a deadline for an end to the occupation.

Source: AFP