Trump invites Netanyahu, Gantz to White House
JERUSALEM — President Trump said Thursday that he would release his longawaited Middle East peace plan within days and invited Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and his rival, former army chief Benny Gantz, to the White House Tuesday to discuss it.
If all goes according to plan, Trump will play host to Netanyahu — who has been indicted on equally high charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust — and to his challenger, Gantz, who holds no government office and whose main argument to oust Netanyahu is that he has not been indicted for anything.
The meeting will take both men away from Israel on the day that its Parliament is scheduled to begin debating whether to grant Netanyahu immunity.
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.
Netanyahu and Gantz immediately accepted the invitation.
In Israel, many analysts saw Trump’s invitation as a wily maneuver orchestrated by the seasoned Netanyahu to entrap the less politically experienced Gantz.
For one thing, it is likely to shift the preelection conversation in Israel away from Netanyahu’s indictment. Gantz’s centrist Blue and White party had scheduled a vote Tuesday to set up a House Committee to begin debating the request. 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.
If Trump does roll out his peace plan Tuesday, Gantz could be put in a corner.
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 Gantz signs on to the plan, Lipner added, he will end up playing “third fiddle to Netanyahu.”
At the same time, a plan demanding any concessions from Israel may also prove problematic for Netanyahu, who depends on the support of coalition partners to his right.
As if on cue, the Israeli news media began to crackle with varying leaks of what were billed as the precise terms of the U.S. peace deal, terms that Israel’s rightwing government could hardly have improved on.
Israel would get to annex the strategically important Jordan Valley, making it the country’s new eastern border with Jordan. Israel would also have sovereignty over nearly all existing Jewish settlements on the West Bank.