March 13 was a turbulent day for Majid Faraj, head of the Palestinian Authority's (PA) General Intelligence Service. In the early morning hours, he survived an assassination attempt that targeted Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah’s convoy with a bomb. Hamdallah was visiting Gaza to inaugurate a desalination plant. The PA believes, however, the attackers were actually trying to kill Faraj. Fortunately for him, he was not in his own vehicle, which was the target of the detonation, but in Hamdallah’s car instead.
Before Faraj could even recover from the attack, he was informed that Mike Pompeo, director of the CIA and someone he considered a friend, had been appointed US secretary of state in the Donald Trump administration, replacing Rex Tillerson, who had just been fired. The Palestinians have not felt this relieved since the crisis that erupted last December between the United States and the Palestinians after Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and relocate the US Embassy from Tel Aviv.
After Trump's election in November 2016, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas ordered the establishment of a think tank to examine ways to open new channels of communication with the administration, which was viewed from day one as being a biased, pro-Israel mediator. Even then, Ramallah was hanging all its hopes on Pompeo. It was a gamble, and it succeeded.
Faraj met with Pompeo in Washington in early February 2017 and managed to convince him that the PA could make a significant contribution to regional stability and efforts to contain the spread of radical Islam. One person close to Faraj told Al-Monitor that Pompeo was impressed by the personal story of his Palestinian counterpart. Faraj had grown up in the Dheisheh refugee camp, in the West Bank. His father had been killed by the Israel Defense Forces during the second intifada (2000-05), and his entire family had joined the Forum for Bereaved Parents (The Parents’ Circle), bringing together Israelis and Palestinians who have lost a family member in the conflict.
AL-MONITOR All-Access gives you unlimited access to all our journalism, the full Daily Briefing, exclusive interviews, premium newsletters, and live events — for less than $2/week.
