Israeli and Palestinian meeting in Rhodes

Israeli and Palestinian lawmakers will gather for their first meeting in Rhodes, Greece, in June during a PACE session on the Mideast, a senior Russian lawmaker said on Friday.

“The agenda for the meeting is being prepared,” said Mikhail Margelov, chairman of the international affairs committee in the upper house of the Russia’s parliament and rapporteur on the Middle East for the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE).

The meeting of the PACE subcommittee on the Middle East had originally been planned for 2006 but was put off after Hamas won the Palestinian general election. The radical Islamist group was ousted from the governing coalition after it seized control of the Gaza Strip in June last year in a violent coup.