Nine in ten Palestinians do not believe or trust the US government's claim that its recently unveiled economic plan aims to improve their economic wellbeing, a poll published on Wednesday found.

President Donald Trump's administration presented the economic part of its Israeli-Palestinian peace proposal, dubbed "Peace to Prosperity," in the Bahraini capital of Manama on June 25-6.

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But the poll carried out by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research and the first since the Manama conference, found overwhelming distrust of Washington.

The Palestinians refused to participate in the conference, accusing the US of systematic pro-Israel bias, and this ultimately contributed to the decision not to invite any Israeli or Palestinian official, but businesspeople from both sides did attend.

POLL, 3/7/2019, i24NEWS from i24NEWS on Vimeo.

Ninety percent of the 1,200 people polled said they did not believe or trust Washington's claim that the Bahrain meetings aimed to improve Palestinians' economic conditions.

Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, who is leading the peace plan, said he is seeking to reach out to ordinary Palestinians, bypassing their leaders.

But the survey also found that 79% of the Palestinian population supported their leaders' boycott of the conference, while just 15% were opposed to that position.

More than three quarters said the US plan would not bring prosperity to the Palestinian economy, and some 75% of Palestinians wanted their leaders to outright reject the US plan.

This article was originally published by i24NEWS.

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Panelists at the two-day conference in Bahrain welcomed the proposal's ambitious investment and development goals, but warned it would fall short without good governance, rule of law and realistic prospects for lasting peace through a political vision, which they noted is missing from the initiative.

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Their views were aired as the Palestinians repeated their outright rejection of the "Peace to Prosperity" plan. The Palestinians have boycotted the Trump administration since December 2017, when it recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

The #Palestinian 'collaborators with the occupation', who attended the #BahrainWorkshop, will be 'seriously punished' in their business, ex-Palestinian minister Ashraf Al-Ajrami tells @YishaiFleisher https://t.co/np5AB45xyM pic.twitter.com/290DJVzzAN

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Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund who participated in the conference, suggested that peace was the missing part of the proposal, which was put together by President Donald Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner.

The Palestinians have great economic potential that can only be fulfilled with serious reform and protections for investors that must include serious anti-corruption efforts, but those alone are not enough, Lagarde noted, stressing that a "satisfactory peace" is imperative for prosperity. "It's a matter of putting all the ingredients together," she said.

"Improving economic conditions and attracting lasting investment to the region depends ultimately on being able to reach a peace agreement," she said in a statement released later by the IMF.

Lagarde's comments appeared at odds with the views expressed by Kushner when he opened the conference on Tuesday and said an economic plan was "a necessary precondition to resolving what has been a previously unsolvable political situation."

"I think we're now seeing a situation in the Middle East where a lot of interests are
aligning between non-traditional allies."https://t.co/um1hYzOSQw

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Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who had a hand in earlier peacemaking efforts and has been supportive of Kushner's plan, also spoke of the need for the economic proposal to have a political component.

"Obviously, it isn't a substitute for the politics," Blair said in a conversation with Kushner. "There will be no economic peace. There will be a peace that has a political component and an economic component, but the economy can help the politics and the politics, of course, is necessary for the economy to flourish."

The only Palestinian on the agenda, Ashraf Jabari, downplayed the Palestinian Authority's rejection of the plan. He noted that it had not been formally invited to the conference but he said a Palestinian state was necessary for economic improvements.

"This is our objective: to have an independent state of Palestine," Jabari said. "The Palestinian people would like to be independent and we are sure that this will lead to the development of the Palestinian economy."

Kushner's proposal depends heavily on private sector investment in the West Bank, Gaza as well as Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon, where it envisions creating a million new jobs, cutting Palestinian unemployment to single digits, doubling the Palestinian gross domestic product and reducing the Palestinian poverty rate by 50% through projects in the health care, education, power, water, tourism, transportation and agriculture sectors.

The plan acknowledges that its success hinges on the completion of a long-elusive Israeli-Palestinian peace deal.

But that necessity was driven home by participants who sprinkled their comments with repeated references to "Palestine," a "country" and a "nation-state."

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US President Donald Trump's senior adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner opened an international meeting in Bahrain on Tuesday evening by urging Palestinians, whose leadership is boycotting the event, to think outside the "traditional box" for an economic pathway that he said was a precondition to peace.

Neither the Israeli nor Palestinian governments are attending the event, which the Palestinians and many other Arabs dismiss as pointless and view it as without a political solution. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel was open to the proposal.

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"The Manama workshop is quite disingenuous. It is totally divorced from reality. The elephant in the room is the (Israeli) occupation itself," senior Palestine Liberation Organization official Hanan Ashrawi told a news conference in the West Bank city of Ramallah on Wednesday.

Several thousand Palestinians demonstrated in the Gaza Strip and burned posters of Trump and Netanyahu. "No to the conference of treason, no to the conference of shame" read one banner.

A senior member of the terrorist group Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, criticized the plan as "attempted ruses and word-play at the expense of the historical and extant rights of the Palestinian people."

"This money must not come at the expense on our enduring rights, or at the expense of Jerusalem or the right of return or at the expense of sovereignty and resistance."

US allies Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates discreetly supported the plan, but several Arab states stayed away while others including Jordan and Egypt – the two Arab nations that have reached peace with Israel – sent deputy ministers to the event.

The foreign minister of Bahrain, where the US Navy's Fifth Fleet is based, said the Kushner plan was an "opportunity not to be missed."

He reiterated the need for a two-state solution, which has underpinned every peace plan for decades, but Trump's team has consistently refused to commit to it.

"I think if we take this matter seriously it could be a very important game-changer," Sheikh Khalid bin Ahmed Al Khalifa told Israeli public broadcaster Kan, in English.

The event is taking placed amid high tensions between Tehran on the one hand and Washington and its Gulf allies on the other.

Washington hopes wealthy Gulf states will bankroll the plan, which expects donor nations and investors to contribute $50 billion to Palestinian and neighboring Arab state economies.

Saudi Minister of State Mohammed Al-Sheikh told a panel that Kushner's plan was bolstered by the inclusion of the private sector as a similar proposal, which relied heavily on state funding, had been attempted during the interim peace deals of the 1990s that eventually collapsed.

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Speaking with i24NEWS, he emphasized the nature of the "workshop" as apolitical. Greenblatt confirmed that since the Palestinian Authority has chosen to boycott the peace plan even before it was officially released, Israeli government officials would not be invited either, nor would other world leaders or foreign ministers.

"Without the Palestinian Authority there, having the Israeli government there makes it more political," he told i24NEWS, though he said Israeli business people would be represented there.

The Mideast envoy reiterated that it was a "huge missed opportunity" for the Palestinians not to attend, but said the current focus is on attracting investors and looking for donors to build up the Palestinian economy while garnering feedback.

"This is not just an economic peace. It is not about buying Palestinians off," he said, adding that the second phase of the peace plan would deal with the political issues.

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The Trump administration will decide when to release the peace plan following the Bahrain summit, Greenblatt said, suggesting that it would be around November due to the Israeli election on Sept. 17.

Trump's adviser did not convey discontent over the delay, arguing that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was not the core of the conflict in the region, saying Iran was the main problem.

Asked whether the Trump administration would allow for negotiations once the deal is presented, Greenblatt assured that it would be flexible.

"There is no such thing as a take it or leave it deal," he said.

Greenblatt will speak at the Israel Hayom Forum for US-Israel Relations next week in Jerusalem along with US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley.

This article was originally published by i24NEWS.

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