Antony Blinken
Antony BlinkenReuters

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will ask Secretary of State Yair Lapid at their meeting today (Wednesday) to limit Chinese involvement in the Israeli economy, according to a senior US State official.

The Biden government has raised little of the Chinese issue to the new Israeli government. Israel's ties to China were hardly discussed during Prime Minister Naftali Bennett's visit to Washington and his meeting with President Joe Biden in August, though CIA chief Bill Burns raised the issue in his meeting with Bennett a few weeks earlier.

"As we have raised with all our partners, we will raise the issue of China and be honest about the risks inherent in Chinese investments," the senior US State Department official said to the press ahead of the meeting. "The US sees China as a competitor challenging the world order."

Senior Israeli officials said that the new government has a new policy regarding China and it sees the issue as one national security and not just as an economic issue of foreign investment. The issue is currently at the heart of National Security, which is leading the talks with the Biden administration.

The senior State Department official said the Biden administration was still interested in reopening the US consulate in Jerusalem, which was closed during the Trump administration. However, the senior stressed that at this stage he has no new details to provide on the subject. US Secretary of State Blinken is also interested in discussing the situation in Judea and Samarai with Lapid, as well as the economic and security situation in the Gaza Strip.

The senior official noted that during the meeting to be held on Wednesday between Blinken, Lapid and Emirates Foreign Minister Abdullah Bin Zayed, the establishment of two teams for cooperation between the United States, Israel, and the UAE will be announced. One team will be involved in promoting coexistence between religions, and the second team will be working on cooperation in the fields of water and energy.

"We want to implement the agreements in new ways and we are working on ways to expand the agreements," the senior US official said. "We hope that the normalization will also help advance the Israeli-Palestinian issue."