Palestinians will stay away from a U.S.-led conference in Bahrain next month that the Trump administration has cast as an overture to its own plan for peace between them and Israel, a Palestinian cabinet minister said on Monday.
Washington announced the conference on Sunday, describing it as an opportunity to drum up international investment for the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
The Palestinians, who have boycotted the Trump administration since it recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital in December 2017, have shown little interest in discussing a plan which they anticipate will fall far short of their core demands.
Following a meeting of the Palestinian cabinet on Monday, Ahmed Majdalani, the social development minister and a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization's executive committee, said: "There will be no Palestinian participation in the Manama workshop."
"Any Palestinian who would take part would be nothing but a collaborator for the Americans and Israel," he said.
Mohammad Shtayyeh reiterated Palestinians' aspirations for a two-state peace agreement with Israel entailing control of the West Bank and Gaza – currently run by the Islamist group Hamas – as well as east Jerusalem as their future capital. Internationally mediated talks have been stalemated for years.
U.S. officials have predicted the Manama event will include representatives and business executives from Europe, the Middle East and Asia, as well as some finance ministers.
The economic component discussed will constitute an announcement on the first part of the Trump peace plan, U.S. officials said.
But Bashar Masri, a Palestinian businessman and the founder of Rawabi, the first Palestinian planned city in the West Bank, said that he had turned down an invitation to speak at the conference.
"We will not engage in any event outside the Palestinian national consensus," Masri wrote on social media. "The idea of an economic peace is an old one now being asked in a different way, and just as our people have rejected it in the past, we reject it now."
Israel's finance minister, Moshe Kahlon, said on Sunday he had yet to receive an invitation to the Bahrain meeting.
On Monday, Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely said that Israel was open to attending.
"We have no problem sending representatives to Bahrain but the problem, as always, is that the Palestinian side is not genuinely interested in economic benefits," said Hotovely.
The Trump administration has said its peace plan would require compromise by both sides.
Gaza's ruling Hamas movement also condemned the Bahrain conference.
