That began a series of U.S. moves to pressure Abbas, including closing the Palestinian diplomatic office in Washington and shuttering the State Department diplomatic office for Palestinians in Jerusalem. The Trump administration has also cut funding for Palestinians and attempted to sideline the U.N. agency that provides funds for schools, hospitals and other infrastructure.

 

Kushner’s conference is scheduled at the same time as a gathering of that agency, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, as a deliberate counterpoint. The Trump administration has said it wants to reframe discussions about Palestinians’ future away from a construct Kushner calls charity-based.

 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has promised to review the full plan when it is presented, most likely after Israel’s second round of elections this year. The plan has been repeatedly delayed, most recently because of U.S. reluctance to issue it while Netanyahu is standing for reelection.

 

 

Netanyahu said on Sunday that Israel will keep an open mind.

 

“We will hear the American proposal in a fair and open manner. I can’t understand how the Palestinians rejected the plan before even hearing what is in it,” Netanyahu said.

 

Netanyahu spoke as he toured the Jordan Valley — the part of the occupied West Bank that borders Jordan — with visiting U.S. national security adviser John Bolton.

 

Netanyahu has been a vocal advocate for greater diplomatic and economic ties between Israel and the Persian Gulf, which is an idea underpinning Kushner’s plan.

 

Israeli U.N. Ambassador Danny Danon said he encourages public discussion of how Israeli-Arab economic trade and cooperation could benefit everyone, and how in his view Palestinian leaders stand in the way.

 

“Tell your people exactly the fact that the Palestinian leaders are not willing to cooperate,” Danon said about Arab officials. “Tell them that we are willing to do a lot for the Palestinians and for cooperation against Iran for global security. I think the leaders should be stronger and tell the people what they actually think.”

 

 

Israeli government participation was in flux as late as last week, with neither Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz nor Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon publicly confirmed.

 

Netanyahu on Tuesday said, “Israelis will of course participate” in the conference, though it was unclear if he was referring to business representatives who are expected to attend.

 

Itamar Eichner, the head of the Israeli diplomatic correspondents’ association, said the confusion was “huge” in the lead up to the event. The association had been pushing the finance minister to take a press delegation before realizing that “they were so embarrassed that they didn’t even know if they were going to go.”

 

Conference organizers have had a lower acceptance rate than hoped from Israeli, Palestinian and other Arab business figures, interviews with those invited suggest.

 

A Palestinian business leader who declined an invitation said the session is insulting.

 

“Their attempt to create a conference about investment in Palestine is yet another attempt by the U.S. and Israel to dangle a carrot in front of the Palestinian people by promising investments, which are essentially another word for a bribe,” he said.

 

The business leader, who requested anonymity to share details of the session that have not been released publicly, received a second invitation after ignoring the first.

 

“You are receiving this email as a follow up to Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin’s invitation to the Peace to Prosperity Workshop,” conference organizers wrote. “We look forward to seeing you in Manama.”

 

A preliminary schedule sent to potential participants lists top executives from U.S. energy and construction firms, as well as International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde and investment giant Blackstone’s chief executive, Stephen Schwarzman, among the speakers.

 

Trump backer and confidant Thomas J. Barrack Jr. is to moderate a discussion on “fostering a culture of innovation and entre­pre­neur­ship.”

 

The billionaire investor and chairman of the Trump inaugural committee did not respond to requests for comment on his goals for the session or views on Middle East peace.

 

Kushner has termed the meeting a “workshop” rather than a pledging conference, but a primary goal is to line up international financial support and investment interest for projects in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

 

Persian Gulf power brokers Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are main sponsors for the conference, but have not yet specified what they might pay to underwrite Kushner’s plans. His plans also envision European investment and business partnerships in Africa and Asia, according to people who have spoken with Kushner.

 

Wealthy Persian Gulf nations are sending delegations and investment representatives, but Egypt and Jordan, traditional U.S. partners in the region, waited until Saturday to announce that each will send a deputy finance minister. Jordan said it will deliver a message at the conference stressing commitment to Palestinian sovereignty.

 

A senior Bahraini government official who requested anonymity to freely discuss diplomatic discussions said the session should not be interpreted as Bahrain’s endorsement of Kushner’s approach.

 

“This is just related to business and not politics. The fact that the workshop will take place in Bahrain will not change any of our politics or stance toward the issue,” the official said. “We still support the peace plan of King Abdullah and the idea that East Jerusalem would be the capital of a Palestinian state.”

 

That was a reference to the 2002 Arab peace plan proposed by the late Saudi king, which outlines a path for Arab recognition of Israel but insists on the core Palestinian demands that Israel return occupied land, including East Jerusalem.

 

Professor Yitshak Kreiss, the director of the Sheba medical center, will be among the Israeli private sector attendees, his spokesman Steve Walz confirmed.

 

“He’s honored to be invited and looking forward to the summit,” said Walz. “We don’t know exactly what’s going to go on there yet.”

 

Bahraini, Saudi, Russian and Turkish investment figures are listed on the program, including one who played an important role in former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 election.

 

Mueller devoted 12 pages to Kirill Dmitriev’s efforts to meet members of the Trump administration immediately following the 2016 election. Mueller’s report describes how Dmitriev worked closely with George Nader, an adviser to the royal court of the United Arab Emirates, to try to establish a back channel to Trump at a meeting with defense contractor Erik Prince at a resort at the Seychelles in January 2017. Prince was close to former Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon and his sister was nominated by Trump to be education secretary.

 

Dmitriev also worked with a friend of Kushner’s, a New York hedge fund manager named Rick Gerson, to write a plan for reconciliation between the United States and Russia, which Dmitriev implied had backing from Russian President Vladi­mir Putin, according to the report. Shortly before Trump’s inauguration, Gerson gave the plan to Kushner, who passed it along to Bannon and Rex Tillerson, the Exxon executive who would become Trump’s first secretary of state. Dmitriev then pressed Gerson, emailing him six days after Trump took office that his “boss,” Putin, “was asking if there had been any feed back on the proposal.”

 

Mueller described Dmitriev as “closely connected to Putin” and wrote that Dmitriev received a text message from another person, whose name has been redacted from the report: “Putin has won,” the text read.

 

The White House has not put forward a full list of attendees for Kushner’s workshop. A senior European official who declined to attend said Poland, whose right-wing government is a favorite of Trump’s, may be the only European nation to send a high-level delegation.

 

Western European nations are pledged to a two-state solution to the conflict and oppose Trump’s Jerusalem declaration.

 

A senior Middle Eastern official who also requested anonymity to voice skepticism about the conference, said that during his visits to the region Kushner has not appeared “open to listen to people who had different opinions or explained to him that his approach was disregarding historical facts and emotions of Palestinians or Arabs.”

 

“Imagine, if we Arabs would tell the Israelis and Americans, we will organize a conference and gather 3 trillion dollars, would you guys give us back Jerusalem?” the official said. “How would they like that? “

 

Others said they had hoped to be invited but had not been and were unable to obtain any information about the event.

 

“We support the idea very much but unfortunately weren’t invited,” said David Simcha, the President of the Israel-Palestinian Chamber of Commerce. “We tried to get some information on who is going to be there but haven’t been able to.”