POLITICAL ASPECTS
The launch of Trump's plan to end the decades-long conflict between Israel and the Palestinians has been delayed numerous times over the past two years.
The political aspects of the peace initiative have been closely guarded. Only the economic proposals, including a $50 billion investment plan put forward by Trump advisor Jared Kushner, have been announced.
A source familiar with the peace team's thinking said bringing both Netanyahu and Gantz in on the details is aimed at defusing any suggestion that Trump might be favouring one Israeli candidate over another.
Israeli-Palestinian peace talks collapsed in 2014 and Palestinians have called Trump's proposal dead in the water even before its publication.
The Palestinian leadership said that there had been no communication with the Trump administration.
Following Gantz's announcement that he would go to Washington, Palestine Liberation Organisation executive committee member Wassel Abu Youssef told Reuters:
"Blue and White and Likud are two faces of the same coin. There is an alliance between the U.S. administration and the Israeli parties running into the election."
Speaking in the West Bank city of Ramallah, he added: "We will not accept the 'Deal of the Century' and there is no power on earth that can force the Palestinian people to concede their rights, represented in establishing their independent state, with Jerusalem as its capital."
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has said Washington can no longer be regarded as an honest mediator, accusing it of pro-Israel bias. This followed a series of Trump decisions that delighted Israel but dismayed and infuriated Palestinians.
These included recognising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, moving the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and slashing hundreds of millions of dollars in humanitarian aid to the Palestinians.
