Abbas held discussions with US President Joe Biden in Bethlehem on July 15 and then spoke to President Emmanuel Macron in Paris on July 20. General disappointment with the outcome of the Biden talks saw the Palestinian leadership turn its attention toward the EU. During his meeting with Abbas, Biden reportedly said that the conditions were not currently suitable to relaunch the Palestine-Israel peace process. As a result, he failed to propose any plan to end the Israeli occupation and took no position on the matter of the expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank. The Israeli settlements occupy 201 square kilometers (3.6 percent of the occupied West Bank) and are inhabited by around 700,000 Israeli settlers.
