President Donald Trump on Tuesday published a letter sent to him by Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas, who offered the president his well-wishes after the assassination attempt on Trump’s life.
“It is with grave concern that I have received news and later on watched footage of your attempted assassination. Acts of violence must not have a place in a world of law and order,” Abbas wrote Trump. “Respect for the other with tolerance and valuing of human life is what must prevail.”
Trump wrote in response: “Mahmoud — so nice — thank you — everything will be good. Best wishes.” The president posted a photo of the exchange just before Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is set to meet with him at his Mar-a-Lago hotel in Florida.
“Looking forward to seeing Bibi Netanyahu on Friday, and even more forward to achieving Peace in the Middle East!” Trump wrote on social media.
The letter “was presented to President Trump after the heinous assassination attempt on his life. As he has said previously, President Trump wants to end all wars and bring peace to the region so that ‘everything will be good,'” Trump’s campaign’s communication director Steve Cheung told the Times of Israel.
Abbas and Trump have not been in communication since December 2017, when Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Abbas called Jerusalem at the time the “eternal capital of the State of Palestine” and rejected the United States’ role in peace discussions.
President Joe Biden’s administration has stressed its desire to see a “unified West Bank and Gaza under a revitalized Palestinian Authority” under Abbas’s control. Trump said in April that he wasn’t sure “a two-state solution anymore is gonna work.”
“There was a time when I thought two states could work. Now I think two states is going to be very, very tough. I think it’s going to be much tougher to get. I also think you have fewer people that liked the idea. You had a lot of people that liked the idea four years ago. Today, you have far fewer people that like that idea,” he said in a Time interview.
This week, Abbas’s Fatah faction and Hamas officials reentered talks about Palestinian unification, to join Fatah, formerly the Palestinian National Liberation Movement, and Hamas. On Tuesday, the two Palestinian factions signed an agreement to form a consensus government that would focus on “ending division and strengthening Palestinian unity.” China’s Foreign Ministry hosted the talks.
Israeli officials have rejected proposals that have either Hamas or the Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority rule Gaza after the war is finished.
“Instead of rejecting terrorism, Mahmoud Abbas embraces the murderers and rapists of Hamas, revealing his true face,” Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said in a statement on Tuesday. “In reality, this won’t happen because Hamas’s rule will be crushed, and Abbas will be watching Gaza from afar. Israel’s security will remain solely in Israel’s hands.”
Shortly after the failed assassination attempt on Trump, reports emerged that Secret Service had been recently made aware of an unrelated threat to Trump’s life from Iranian leaders seeking revenge for the killing of Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’ elite Quds force who was killed by U.S. forces under Trump.