WASHINGTON _ President Donald Trump on Monday hosts Israel's two top political figures at the White House, sharing details of a long-awaited U.S. proposal to balance Palestinians' statehood claims with Israel's security concerns _ a plan that is likely to fail given the lack of Palestinian involvement.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his chief opposition rival, Benny Gantz, will meet separately with Trump and Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo in hastily scheduled encounters to "discuss regional issues," the White House said.
Veteran U.S. diplomats involved in the Middle East excoriated the administration for proceeding without Palestinian support or involvement, predicting that Trump would merely dust off previously failed ideas as a political stunt.
"Releasing a plan (untethered from anything other than politics) six weeks before Israel's 3rd election within a year and without regard to Palestinians, takes diplomatic malpractice to new levels," tweeted Aaron David Miller, a former Middle East peace negotiator and diplomat for Republican and Democratic administrations.
Martin Indyk, another former negotiator and former assistant secretary of state, called the unveiling of the plan a "farce."
Both Trump, who is facing an impeachment trial in the Senate, and Netanyahu, indicted in Israel on corruption charges, could use the political respite offered by the photo ops that Washington will provide Tuesday with the expected formal announcement of the plan.
Netanyahu this week faces a hearing on whether his official immunity will be revoked, a step that could hasten his trial. The Israel parliament, or Knesset, was scheduled to vote on the issue Tuesday.
Trump last week surprised everyone, including the Israelis, by announcing he would finally reveal elements of his plan to resolve decades of conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. He has called this "the ultimate deal," and assigned his son-in-law Jared Kushner to head the negotiations.
But those negotiations were troubled from the start, with Kushner, also a senior adviser, repeatedly sent back to the drawing board and unable to muster the support from Gulf Arab states that he sought. Most important, Palestinians were not included in the talks, dooming any agreement to failure.
Palestinian leaders boycotted meetings with Trump's representatives after a series of administration steps they saw as overtly pro-Israel. These included Trump's decision in 2017 to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and move the U.S. Embassy there from Tel Aviv. Under decades of international consensus, the status of the contested holy city, part of which Palestinians seek as the capital of an eventual independent state, was to be determined as part of an overall peace agreement.
Trump went on to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, a fertile valley seized from Syria in the 1967 war, and to legitimize Israeli settlements in occupied West Bank lands claimed by the Palestinians, which most of the international community regard as illegal. Both steps reversed decades of U.S. policy and called into question the "two-state solution" for the region _ an independent Palestinian nation living peacefully alongside Israel _ that has been the pillar of Middle East peace-making for years.
Several of Trump's pro-Israel actions came amid Netanyahu's hard-fought _ and thus far unsuccessful _ reelection campaign, and have been widely seen in Israel as an attempt to give the longest serving Israeli prime minister a boost. Netanyahu and his right-wing Likud Party have faced Gantz, head of a new centrist political party, in two inconclusive elections last year, forcing yet a third round of voting in a little over a month.
In addition to Kushner, the team that Trump assembled included other pro-Israel figures: his former real estate lawyer Jason Greenblatt and his ambassador to Israel and former bankruptcy lawyer David Friedman. All three had long ties to the Israeli settlement community, whose vast expansion in recent years Palestinians say threatens the formation of any sort of integral Palestinian state.
Some in the administration say the forthcoming plan is more of a "vision" than an agreement. Kushner has said its core is to offer economic opportunity to the Palestinians instead of the fulfillment of political aspirations _ an idea that has failed in the past.
Trump's negotiators say they are attempting to be more pragmatic than previous administrations. Trump said early in his administration it would be one of his crowning achievements to forge a peace agreement where other governments have failed.
Palestinians, however, have reacted angrily, saying they will not be "bought off."
Hanan Ashrawi, a veteran Palestinian leader, noted the timing of the sudden White House invitation to Netanyahu and Gantz.
"Note that the 28th (of January) was the date of the Knesset's immunity vote on Netanyahu's corruption charges," she said on Twitter. "Add to it Trump's impeachment issues & you have a lethal diversionary tactic at the expense of Palestinian rights & int'l law _ criminality+ personal agendas=no peace."
