With weeks to go until Israel’s election, the Trump-Netanyahu peace plan unveiling couldn’t be more perfectly timed

Just ahead of the crucial vote, Israel’s prime minister got to join hands with the US leader on the world stage, drawing attention away from corruption charges

Trump and Netanyahu unveil the peace plan at the White House (Reuters)

The unveiling of Donald Trump’s peace plan to resolve the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict was, as one commentator messaged me, “peak Bibi”.

A few weeks before a general election, Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, stood beaming side by side with close friend Mr Trump, looking victorious – despite the fact that moments before he had been formally indicted back home on corruption charges in three cases.

Mr Netanyahu declared the deal, which was drafted without any participation from the Palestinians, to be the “best for Israel”, a point analysts largely agreed with: it was the most pro-Israeli vision of a post-conflict Israel and Palestine to come out of Washington.

“You have been the greatest friend that Israel has ever had in the White House,” he said to Mr Trump, truly meaning it. Despite some resistance back home to the concept of a Palestinian state, overall it is seen as a win for Israel, which will be given an undivided Jerusalem as well as the green light to annex swathes of the West Bank even before the deal is signed.

Mr Netanyahu, who vehemently denies the corruption charges, also did not have to share the limelight.

Although his chief election rival – Benny Gantz – had been invited to Washington to talk through the plan with Mr Trump the day before, Mr Gantz was heading back to Israel when the big reveal happened.

Gantz’s and Netanyahu’s political parties “Blue and White” and Likud are neck and neck in the polls for the election tabled for 2 March. After Mr Netanyahu failed to form a government twice following two inconclusive votes last year, the US is not sure who is going to win and so did not want to appear to be influencing the voters by only inviting one leader.

But Gantz bowed out of joining the launch of the peace deal because he had to be back in Jerusalem to vote against Mr Netanyahu’s immunity bid in his upcoming corruption trial. If the Israeli parliament had voted for stripping Netanyahu of his immunity, it would have dealt a humiliating blow just at the wrong time.

Gantz was likely still on the plane when he realised he had been trumped.

With seemingly perfect timing, knowing overall the Knesset would not cast their ballot in his favour, Netanyahu announced he would drop the request to be shielded from prosecution but only after Gantz had left Washington to go home.

Who knows if the timing was deliberate?

But it meant that, just ahead of an election, Mr Netanyahu got to join hands with Trump on the world stage and claim for his own the victories of the fraught peace process.

It’s going to be quite an election.

Yours,

Bel Trew

Middle East correspondent