Top Palestinian Authority (PA) official Hussein Al-Sheikh on Sunday announced that the PA would boycott a meeting with Israeli officials, in protest of the Israeli government’s decision to accelerate the process of authorizing construction in Judea and Samaria and authorizing Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich to oversee these processes.
“After the decision of the Israeli government to accelerate the stages of settlement growth in the West Bank, and to authorize its Minister of Finance, Smotrich, to ratify this, we decided to boycott the meeting of the Joint Economic Committee between the two parties, which was scheduled to be held tomorrow,” Al-Sheikh wrote on Twitter.
“The Palestinian leadership will study a number of other measures and decisions for implementation related to the relationship with Israel,” he added.
Under the new regulations approved on Sunday, the approval process for construction in Judea and Samaria will be reduced to just two stages from the current six stages.
Nabil Abu Rudeineh, the official spokesman of PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas, said on Sunday that the Palestinian Arab leadership rejects the Israeli government's move.
In an interview with Voice of Palestine radio, Abu Rudeineh said that "Israel is playing with fire both on the issue of Jerusalem and on the issue of the settlements, as it knows that these are Palestinian, Arab and international red lines."
He warned the Israeli government against implementing policies that could lead to an "escalation of tensions on the ground", and said that the US administration is responsible for the crossing of the red lines on the part of Israel.
Al-Sheikh is a senior PA official who holds the powerful position of overseeing day-to-day relations with Israel. Last year, he met with then-Foreign Minister Yair Lapid.
He was named to the PLO’s Executive Committee late last year, raising speculation that he is being groomed as a potential successor to Abbas.