Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid defended his decision to decline repeated requests for meetings from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday. He told Israel’s Army Radio he will meet Abbas only when there is political justification for it, saying this is currently “non-existent”, The New Arab’s Arabic-language sister service, Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, reported. Lapid insisted Israel’s current coalition government is not pursuing political negotiations with the Palestinian Authority and promised not to go behind his coalition partners’ backs by personally initiating such talks. But there i…