WASHINGTON—In late December, President Trump’s aides had a decision to make about his long-delayed Middle East peace plan. Israel was headed for an unprecedented third set of elections, leaving an interim government running the country—and no consensus leader to serve as Washington’s partner on its peace plan.
Administration officials knew they had no prospect of Palestinian support, so they had long believed they needed a firmly established Israeli government to join them in unveiling the plan. But chances of that evaporated in December when parliament dissolved, with new elections due in March. At this rate, the officials feared, the Trump plan might never see the light of day.
The White House team working on the Mideast plan made the decision to shift: They would release the plan before the future of Israel’s government was settled—provided that both Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his chief rival endorsed it and that they gathered a palette of international support.
It was part of a series of shifts that the Trump team, headed by the president’s son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner, was forced to make during the years the plan was under development and after it was released, according to current and former administration officials involved in the effort.
Prior U.S. and international efforts to settle the more than 70-year Israeli-Palestinian conflict have focused on a process that would leave many of the most sensitive issues to negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians. The Trump plan veered from that by presenting a proposed final outcome, favoring Israeli positions over Palestinian views on borders, boundaries and other issues.
From the start of the plan’s development in 2017 and until the final days before its release, the team writing it exercised extraordinarily tight security. Just four people had access to the document: Mr. Kushner, U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, representative for international negotiations Avi Berkowitz and—until he left the administration in October— Jason Greenblatt, Mr. Berkowitz’s predecessor and onetime Trump Organization lawyer.
A small group of senior officials in the administration were briefed and some, including Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, were given copies to read.
The Mideast team kept the plan off email and would meet often in person, clutching paper copies of the text and marking up changes by hand. Messrs. Greenblatt and Berkowitz would often fly to meet Mr. Friedman to discuss sensitive details rather speak about them over the phone.
They decided not to translate the document into Hebrew and Arabic, fearing that it could leak.
Kit Kats and Reese’s candy on a conference table in Mr. Kushner’s West Wing office fueled the team in the final weeks as they made last-minute changes and edits to get the document ready for public release after the team had mostly finished writing it at the end of 2018.
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Key to the shift in administration plans to release the document was timing. The Trump team needed to show political and international support, the current and former officials said, but couldn’t let the process run into or beyond Israel’s election in March.
Mr. Kushner and his team began in late December to circle dates on a calendar. They settled on Jan. 28, but that was contingent on whether Mr. Kushner could line up support from European and Gulf Arab states and bring Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s opponent, Benny Gantz, on board.
At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last month, Mr. Kushner met with various European and Arab officials. The same week, Mr. Pence traveled to Jerusalem with instructions to invite Messrs. Gantz and Netanyahu to the White House for the plan’s rollout.
Mr. Trump gave the final signoff on the plane home from Davos on Jan. 22. A day later, on a trip to Florida, he told reporters he would release the plan the following week.
Mr. Gantz nearly crimped the plans when he voiced second thoughts about his visit, fearing the appearance of being a pawn in Mr. Netanyahu’s election campaign, U.S. and Israeli officials said. The Trump team reached an agreement that allowed Mr. Gantz to come to the White House separately from Mr. Netanyahu.
“For us the idea was not so much when people came, but showing the world this is something the entire country is willing to coalesce behind,” an administration official said.
A spokesperson for Mr. Gantz declined to comment.
Mr. Kushner and his team lined up statements from more than 10 governments in support of the plan, though he couldn’t get as broad support as hoped for. The European Union didn’t come out strongly in favor, saying it would study the Trump plan. Jordan, seen as critical to the effort, joined the Palestinians in opposition.
The United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Oman, Morocco and Bahrain all offered cautious backing for the plan as a starting point, leaving aside their traditional insistence on a negotiated solution based on boundary lines in existence before the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. The 22-member Arab League formally rejected the plan on Saturday.
On Saturday, a senior U.S. official said similar Arab League statements in the past “have placated Palestinian leadership and not led to peace or progress.”
The Trump plan’s release on Tuesday stirred controversy and confusion when Mr. Netanyahu said Israel would present a proposal to annex occupied areas in the West Bank for a cabinet vote in coming days.
Mr. Friedman, the U.S. envoy to Israel, said in a briefing that day Israel could act right away on its claims. But on Wednesday, Mr. Friedman said a U.S.-Israeli committee would have to sign off on territorial changes first, and Mr. Kushner said the U.S. wants Israel to wait until after its March elections before any annexation. The Netanyahu government said it was postponing any vote on the matter.
Other diplomats briefed on the plan said the mixed messaging on Israel’s annexation plans was aimed at maintaining support from Arab and European capitals that didn’t want to be seen as backing an annexation push.
Given the Trump administration’s support for Israel, Mr. Kushner and his team have understood that Palestinian officials would reject the plan, officials said. But they underestimated the depth of Palestinian anger over Mr. Trump’s 2017 recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, which prompted Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to cut ties to the U.S.
“I was surprised at how long they were willing to cut ties,” Mr. Greenblatt said in an interview. “I thought it would take six to 12 months for them to come back to the discussions, but that wasn’t going to happen.”
Still, the Trump team continued trying to reach out to Palestinians, passing messages to officials via other allies. The peace plan team maintained contact with a network of Palestinian business and civic leaders.
“His team asks several people to find a way to talk,” Nabil Abu Rudeineh, a spokesman for Mr. Abbas, said in an interview about the process earlier this year. “We said we cannot talk with anybody—if Jerusalem is off the table, America is off the table.”
Mr. Greenblatt, on a personal trip to Jerusalem in January, met with Zahi Khouri, a Palestinian-American businessman who runs the Coca-Cola franchise in the West Bank and Gaza.
Mr. Khouri said in an interview at his office in Ramallah that Mr. Greenblatt and others have urged Palestinians to keep an open mind, but the administration’s policies make it challenging.
He said he tries to remain hopeful, but “I don’t see any art of the deal.”
Write to Felicia Schwartz at Felicia.Schwartz@wsj.com
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