An Egyptian newspaper has published minutes of a meeting which allegedly took place between Secretary of State John Kerry and a Palestinian delegation. According to the report, Sec. Kerry agreed to cooperate on an anti-Israeli resolution at the United Nations so long as it was balanced. From Ynet News:

Egyptian news website Al-Youm al-Saba’a, which is considered to be Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s mouth piece, published a supposed protocol on Tuesday of a meeting that was held in Washington on December 12 between US Secretary of State John Kerry and US National Security Advisor Susan Rice and a Palestinian delegation headed by senior Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) member Saeb Erekat. The protocol states that Kerry and Rice told the Palestinian delegation that the current US administration under President Barack Obama would be willing to cooperate with them in the UN Security Council given that the resolution would be a balanced one… During the meeting, Kerry and Rice were reportedly both severely critical of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, accusing him of wanting to destroy the possibility of a two-state solution.

There’s more at the link above including Kerry and Rice warning that the incoming Trump administration is dangerous and might move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem. Both the U.S. and the Palestinians have denied the report is accurate. A spokesman for the U.S. National Security Council said the published minutes were a “total fabrication.”

This is a total fabrication. This meeting never occurred. https://t.co/FHDL1taIlF — Ned Price (@Price44) December 28, 2016

However, a researcher with CAMERA, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, pointed out that there was a meeting between Kerry and the Palestinians on the schedule for that day:

/@Price44

Can I point out the meeting is on the schedule online? Any response? pic.twitter.com/Z4KAwi4KRR — Gidon Shaviv (@GidonShaviv) December 28, 2016

@GidonShaviv A meeting with Secretary Kerry and Amb. Rice as the "transcript" suggests? I don't think so. — Ned Price (@Price44) December 28, 2016

/@Price44 Are you saying a meeting took place but the transcript is fake, or that Rice wasn't at the meeting? — Gidon Shaviv (@GidonShaviv) December 28, 2016

And that was the end of the discussion. This story seems to back up Israel’s claim it had “ironclad information” that the U.S. collaborated on this UN resolution. Still, it should be noted that there is an obvious, unanswered question about this report: Where did an Egyptian newspaper get the minutes of this meeting?

Given the reaction, it’s safe to assume the U.S. didn’t leak it. So did Egypt get it from the Palestinian delegation? According to the Jerusalem Post, Secretary General of the PLO Executive Committee Saeb Erkat is claiming the documents were fabricated to back up the claims made by Israel. And it seems no one else was in the room.

Yesterday, Israel’s Ambassador to the U.S., Ron Dermer, said an Israeli government minister had heard “directly” that Joe Biden intervened to get Ukraine to support the resolution. Dermer made clear the evidence went beyond that one claim however. “The evidence we have is much greater than that and it’s pretty clear it’s 100 percent,” Dermer said. He added, “I’ve been with the Prime Minister of Israel for 15 years in one capacity or another. He doesn’t make such a statement without clear evidence and, as I said, we’ll present that evidence to the new administration.”

The problem the administration has is that after all the revelations about how it created an echo chamber to sell the Iran deal and after apparently lying about the cash transfer to Iran in connection with the release of prisoners, it’s pretty hard to take any administration denials at face value.

Here’s the interview with Dermer on Special Report: