President-elect Donald Trump spoke with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Friday, where the Fatah leader asserted his apparent desire to end the war in Gaza.
The Palestinian leader called Trump to congratulate him on his victory in the US presidential election. This is the first time the two had directly spoken since 2017 - when Trump moved the US embassy to Jerusalem.
Abbas said that he is looking forward to working with Trump to achieve a "just and comprehensive" peace, WAFA reported.
Trump responded that he was looking forward to collaborating with the Palestinian President and other regional and global partners to achieve peace in the region.
A Palestinian official briefed on the call said it was "warm and general," according to reporting from Axios.
Despite Abbas's claims, Fatah has slowly been growing closer to Hamas in recent months. Officials from the terror group and the West Bank's governing authority met in Egypt last week to discuss future governance of Gaza. Notably, the Palestinian Authority and Hamas had meant to govern the strip in a coalition but Fatah was run out of the strip by Hamas in 2006.
Previous interactions
While the two haven't spoken officially since the US embassy moved to Jerusalem, Trump published a letter sent to him from Abbas on his Truth Social account after his assassination attempt, which was the first written interaction between the two since 2017.
Trump posted it ahead of a meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, saying that he was "Looking forward to seeing Bibi Netanyahu on Friday, and even more forward to achieving Peace in the Middle East!"
In 2021, Trump said that his conclusion from years of working on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was that Abbas actively wanted peace - maybe more so than Netanyahu.
"I thought he was great," Trump said of Abbas. "He was almost like a father. He couldn't have been nicer. I thought he wanted to make a deal more than Netanyahu."
Trump's 2020 peace plan included establishing a Palestinian state with its capital in east Jerusalem. Abbas refused to discuss it.
However, Abbas has critiqued the Biden administration for never presenting a peace plan.
Reuters contributed to this report.