After a wait of two and a half years, the US administration is launching its Middle East peace plan Tuesday - with an economic initiative that the Palestinians are boycotting.

For this most unconventional of US presidents, Donald Trump's Middle East peace-making bid is unlike decades of previous US attempts.

There is no talk of land swaps, a Palestinian state or other political issues that have vexed diplomats for decades.

The Trump administration says it will get to the political issues later. 

For now, its plan will open over cocktails and dinner Tuesday evening in Bahrain at an intimate two-day "economic workshop" at a luxury hotel overlooking the Gulf.

Led by Trump's son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner, the "Peace to Prosperity" framework dangles the prospect of $50 billion of investment in the Palestinian territories and neighboring Arab countries over 10 years.

Listing a slew of projects to develop roads, border crossings, power generation and tourism, the framework sets an optimistic goal of creating one million Palestinian jobs.

But the Palestinian Authority and its rival Hamas have both denounced the initiative, saying it amounts to a bid by the unabashedly pro-Israel Trump to buy them off in return for not enjoying their own state.

"For America to turn the whole cause from a political issue into an economic one, we cannot accept this," Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas said Sunday.

Hundreds of Palestinians took to the streets in the occupied West Bank on Monday to denounce the conference.

Near Hebron, demonstrators burned pictures of Trump and the king of Bahrain.

They sat around a coffin that read, "No to the deal of the century," a derogatory phrase for the US president's ambitions in the Middle East.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has cast the Palestinians' stance as a sign that they are not serious about peace. "I don't understand how the Palestinians rejected the plan even before knowing what it contained," Netanyahu said.

The right-wing Israeli leader has spoken in recent months of annexing parts of the West Bank, a move that could effectively close Palestinian hopes of their own state.

The US Ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, has said that Washington could accept the annexation and the Trump administration has hinted that its political plan will not mention a Palestinian state - a sharp shift from the goal of years of US diplomacy.