While the Palestinian Authority (PA) has upped its rhetoric against the US administration ever since US President Donald Trump’s announcement late last year recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, new reports suggest Ramallah and Washington continue to cooperate when it comes to intelligence matters.

Ever since Trump's Dec. 6 announcement regarding Jerusalem, public contact between the two sides has been suspended. On May 15, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas recalled head of the PLO office in Washington Hussam Zamlat in protest of the US decision on Jerusalem. Yet despite the diplomatic boycott, Haaretz reported May 28 on a meeting in Washington at the end of April between Palestinian intelligence chief Majid Faraj and Mike Pompeo, who at the time was still head of the CIA but was about to become secretary of state. The meeting came as “part of a close relationship between the two intelligence chiefs, which began last winter,” according to Haaretz.

The article further mentioned that it was the most high-ranking meeting between both sides in the past six months. The men discussed regional security issues that have implications on the region, the meeting of the Palestinian National Council that took place at the end of April and the health of Abbas, “which could signal an American attempt to ensure stability and governance on the Palestinian side in the days after Abbas.”

A Palestinian official close to Abbas, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Al-Monitor, “Abbas and a few other close associates knew about the meeting between Faraj and Pompeo, which was a security meeting par excellence. Security talks between the Palestinian and American sides have been going on without any interruption, knowing that Pompeo had previously met with Abbas in Ramallah in February 2017 in a meeting arranged by Faraj with senior US intel officials.”