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Pence Invites Netanyahu to White House to Discuss Middle East Peace Plan Trump Invites Netanyahu to White House to Discuss Middle East Peace Plan
(about 3 hours later)
JERUSALEM — Vice President Mike Pence on Thursday invited Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and his chief political rival, Benny Gantz, to the White House to discuss the administration’s plan for Middle East peace — a proposal that had appeared to stall in recent months. JERUSALEM — President Trump said Thursday that he would release his long-awaited Middle East peace plan within days and invited Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and his rival, the former army chief Benny Gantz, to the White House next week to discuss it.
“President Trump asked me to extend an invitation to Prime Minister Netanyahu to come to the White House next week to discuss regional issues as well as the prospect of peace here in the Holy Land,” Mr. Pence said to reporters in Jerusalem after an event commemorating the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Neither the plan nor the visit may do much to advance the cause of peace, but the occasion promises to be a surreal spectacle.
“At the prime minister’s suggestion, I also extended an invitation to Benny Gantz, the leader of the Blue and White party, and he has accepted the invitation to join the prime minister with the president at the White House next week.” If all goes according to plan, Mr. Trump, who is on trial in the Senate on charges of high crimes and misdemeanors, will play host to Mr. Netanyahu, who has been indicted on equally high charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust, and to his challenger, Mr. Gantz, who holds no government office and whose main argument for his campaign to oust Mr. Netanyahu is that he has not been indicted for anything.
Mr. Netanyahu said he had “gladly” accepted the invitation, and Mr. Pence told reporters that Mr. Gantz had accepted as well. The meeting will take both men away from Israel on the day that its Parliament is scheduled to debate whether to grant Mr. Netanyahu immunity.
The White House has repeatedly delayed announcing its Middle East peace plan, recently because Israel was in the middle of elections. But after two inconclusive elections and a third vote scheduled for March, it now appears that the administration has decided to move ahead. And it does not include any representatives from the other side of the conflict, the Palestinians, who have refused to engage with an administration it sees as hopelessly biased in Israel’s favor.
The invitation to discuss the plan also provides a dose of counterprogramming — for President Trump, to help distract from his impeachment trial, and for Mr. Netanyahu, who has been indicted on corruption charges and has struggled to win re-election. As for the peace plan itself, Palestinian officials repeated their position Thursday that they would treat any American plan as dead on arrival.
Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Gantz, his chief political rival, have been locked in a stalemate with neither able to form a government after two elections. “It’s insane,” said Michael J. Koplow, an analyst and supporter of a two-state solution at the Israel Policy Forum. “There’s really no other word for it.”
Palestinian officials have refused to participate in discussions about the peace plan with Washington, which it sees as biased in Israel’s favor. Even Mr. Trump acknowledged the oddity of the situation.
The peace plan was spearheaded by the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner. Although its details remain secret, it is believed to be weighted heavily in favor of Israel and there is little expectation that it would be acceptable to the Palestinians. “We have both candidates coming — unheard-of,” he told reporters aboard Air Force One as he returned from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
However, the White House invitations could have large political implications in Israel. The meeting, set for Tuesday, was announced by Vice President Mike Pence in Jerusalem, where he was attending an event commemorating the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp.
Mr. Netanyahu has tried to capitalize on his close relationship to Mr. Trump, marketing himself during the election campaign as someone who has Mr. Trump’s ear and is best positioned to seize the advantages of a peace plan favorable to Israel. Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Gantz immediately accepted the invitation.
He would also be happy to shift the public conversation away from his indictment in three corruption cases, and to push off a vote in the Israeli parliament next week involving his request for immunity from prosecution, which he is likely to lose. But the unfolding developments — which upstaged a large gathering in Jerusalem of world leaders including President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and Prince Charles for the commemoration — did not appear to end there.
Many of Mr. Trump’s pro-Israel moves — including moving the embassy to Jerusalem, cutting aid to the Palestinians and asserting that Israeli settlements in occupied territory did not violate international law — have been seen as political gifts to Mr. Netanyahu that could help his standing domestically. As if on cue, the Israeli news media began to crackle with leaks of what were billed as the precise terms of the American peace deal, terms that Israel’s right-wing government could hardly have improved on.
By extending the invitation to Mr. Gantz, the Trump administration appears to be hedging its bets. Israel would get to annex the strategically important Jordan River valley, making it the country’s new eastern border with Jordan, media reports said. Israel would also have sovereignty over nearly all existing Jewish settlements on the West Bank, including in isolated areas, according to the reports.
Mr. Gantz, a centrist and former Israeli Defense Forces chief, had at first argued for delaying the release of the peace plan until after the election, saying the release would interfere with domestic politics. But he recently reversed his position. Jerusalem would be under Israeli control, including the eastern part of the city, which Palestinians claim as their future capital.
He told reporters this week that he hoped Mr. Trump would move up the release, and said he was looking forward to its publication. Mr. Gantz had said in the past that its release before the March election would constitute “interference.” Preconditions for a Palestinian state would be the demilitarization of Gaza, the disarming of Hamas, a cessation of financing terrorism, and recognition of Israel as a Jewish state and of Jerusalem as its capital, the reports said.
It was not immediately clear what caused Mr. Gantz’s reversal, unless he knew that moves were afoot in any case and did not want to cross the Trump administration. Mr. Trump at first tweeted caution, saying, “Reports about details and timing of our closely-held peace plan are purely speculative.”
But he later told reporters aboard Air Force One that he expected to release details of the plan “sometime prior to” Tuesday’s meeting.
The leaks alone were enough for the Palestinians to express fresh outrage.
Husam Zumlot, a senior diplomat and adviser to President Mahmoud Abbas, said the latest move from Washington “only reaffirms our absolute rejection of what the U.S. administration has done so far, particularly the recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and other decisions that violate international law.”
And Bassem Naim, a Hamas official and former Gaza minister of health, warned bluntly on Twitter, “Palestinians will hinder the implementation of the deal, whatever the price. It will trigger a new #Intifada.”
Mr. Trump said he believed the plan could work and that he had spoken to the Palestinians “briefly.”
“They have a lot of incentive to do it,” he said. “I’m sure they maybe will react negatively at first but it’s actually very positive for them.”
In Israel, many analysts saw Mr. Trump’s invitation as a wily maneuver orchestrated by the more seasoned Mr. Netanyahu, who boasts of his close ties to the Trump administration, to entrap the less politically experienced Mr. Gantz.
For one thing, it is likely to shift the pre-election conversation in Israel away from Mr. Netanyahu’s indictment in three corruption cases and could delay or even scuttle Mr. Gantz’s push for the Israeli Parliament to deal speedily with Mr. Netanyahu’s request for parliamentary immunity from prosecution.
Mr. Gantz’s centrist Blue and White party had scheduled a vote on Tuesday to set up a House Committee to begin debating the request. Mr. Netanyahu has been trying to push the process off until after the March 2 election, because he does not have a majority to support his immunity bid in the current Parliament.
The immunity process could go ahead in any case, but Mr. Netanyahu benefits every day it is delayed.
More significantly, though, if Mr. Trump does roll out his peace plan, or parts of it, on Tuesday, Mr. Gantz could be put in a corner.
Mr. Koplow said Mr. Gantz would almost certainly have to embrace the plan, because its terms, even if unrealistic, would be so attractive to Israeli voters that it would be impossible to oppose them.
Mr. Netanyahu, an unparalleled political salesman, could portray the Trump proposal as a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” using that to “browbeat” Mr. Gantz into agreeing to enter a unity government, with Mr. Netanyahu retaining the premiership, Mr. Koplow said.
“I’m sure the next step after this will be an enormous coordinated pressure campaign, to not stand in the way and to not take the risk of having another election that results in a deadlock,” he added.
The next argument, Mr. Koplow said, would to point out that “before you know it, President Trump himself might be gone, so it may be the only opportunity to see it through.’”
Shalom Lipner, a former adviser to seven Israeli prime ministers, said, “If the plan is as charitable to Israel as everyone expects and Gantz comes out against it, that would sink his chances because it will be popular in Israel, and it will burn his bridges with the White House.”
If Mr. Gantz signs onto the plan, Mr. Lipner added, he will end up reduced to playing “third fiddle to Netanyahu.”
Either accepting or rejecting the plan could also cause strife in Mr. Gantz’s Blue and White party, which is made up of left-leaning, centrist and center-right factions united mainly in their desire to send Mr. Netanyahu packing.
If Mr. Trump approves Israeli annexation of West Bank territory, Mr. Gantz will be particularly hamstrung.
Mr. Netanyahu has already pledged to unilaterally annex the Jordan Valley, a strategic strip of the Israeli-occupied West Bank along the boundary with Jordan. This would be a highly contentious move but one that would be popular in Israel.
Mr. Gantz has been tilting to the right to try to ease the way for some right-wingers to join him in a coalition after the March vote. On Tuesday he offered a pledge that he, too, would annex the Jordan Valley, but only in coordination with the international community, which is hardly likely to be forthcoming absent an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal.
And he called Mr. Netanyahu’s bluff, daring him to move ahead with annexation immediately to prove it was not just election spin on his part.
A green light from Mr. Trump would make it more difficult for Mr. Netanyahu to hold off from annexation, or for Mr. Gantz to oppose it.
Yet a plan demanding any concessions from Israel may also prove problematic for Mr. Netanyahu, who depends on the support of coalition partners to his right.
Naftali Bennett, leader of the pro-settlement Yamina party, put Mr. Netanyahu on notice on Thursday night, saying: “It should be clear: Yamina will not allow land to be transferred to the Arabs or the establishment of a Palestinian state. After the details of the plan are published, we will respond.”
What few Israeli or American analysts questioned was that Mr. Trump, who has repeatedly come to Mr. Netanyahu’s aid, appeared to be doing so again, just more transparently.
“If the United States comes out with a one-in-a-thousand-year offer when it has not coordinated with one side and the other is at the peak of an election season, it raises questions,” said Sallai Meridor, a former Israeli ambassador to the United States.
And Daniel B. Shapiro, who was former President Barack Obama’s ambassador to Israel, noted that many critics of past presidents had “offered lectures about the unacceptability of U.S. interference in Israeli elections.”
“A lot of the same people are awfully quiet about this blatant interference,” he said.
But Mr. Trump was enthusiastic.
“I’d love to be able to do that deal,” he said. “They say that’s the hardest of all deals. I love doing deals.”
“It’s a great plan,” he added. “It’s a plan that really would work.”