It said in a statement Netanyahu, at a meeting with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov, "presented Israel's position whereby he is always ready to meet (Abbas) without preconditions and is therefore considering the Russian president's proposal and the timing for a possible meeting".
A spokesman for
The last Israeli-Palestinian peace talks collapsed in 2014.
With his eye on shifting big-power influence in the Middle East, Netanyahu has visited Russia for talks with Putin three times in the last year, and the two also speak on occasion by phone to discuss regional issues.
| Update from The Times of Israel, in which the Palestinians firmly reject yet another opportunity: |
A report that Paleostinian Authority President the ineffectual Mahmoud Abbas
... a graduate of the prestigious unaccredited Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow with a doctorate in Holocaust Denial...
agreed to meet Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Moscow was swiftly denied by senior Paleostinian officials Monday.
Russia’s Interfax news agency earlier Monday reported that the Paleostinian envoy to Moscow had conveyed Abbas’s willingness to sit with Netanyahu during a meeting with Russia’s Middle East envoy, Mikhail Bogdanov, in Amman earlier in the day.
Such talks would be the first public summit between the two leaders since 2010, and a sign of progress to jump-start moribund peace talks amid a flurry of international diplomatic initiatives, including an offer by Russian President Vladimir Putin
...Second and fourth President and sixth of the Russian Federation and the first to remain sober. Putin is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law, which occasionally results in somebody dropping dead from polonium poisoning. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to Putin. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile or dead...to host face to face talks in Moscow.
But a senior Paleostinian Authority source denied the Russian report to The Times of Israel, saying Ramallah has yet to receive a response from Israel to its preconditions -- that Jerusalem commit to a settlement freeze and a prisoner release. Those preconditions, the source said, would have to be met before a direct meeting between Abbas and Netanyahu could take place.
The source emphasized the entire Paleostinian leadership was united in its demand that Israel commit to the preconditions, and expressed "puzzlement" that the report of Abbas’s ostensible willingness to meet Netanyahu first appeared in Russian media, rather than a Paleostinian outlet.
Another source from Abbas’s office also denied the Russian report, telling The Times of Israel that "we don’t want a meeting just for the sake of a meeting, but something to advance the grinding of the peace processor."