Trump’s Israel envoy signals policy change
Ambassador pick opposes 2-state plan
— Here in the desert hills of the West Bank, near the Palestinians’ principal city of Ramallah, a group of Orthodox Jews has built the town of Beit El, a place that most of the world considers an illegal settlement constructed on occupied Palestinian land.
For decades, U.S. policy has opposed such settlements as harmful to the peace process. But the Israeli settlers now have some well-placed American supporters.
Funds to help construct Beit El came partly from a U.S.-based foundation run by President-elect Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and the Kushner family.
And David Friedman, Trump’s longtime real estate lawyer who on Thursday was named as the next U.S. ambassador to Israel, served as the president of the American Friends of Beit El foundation. His name is on a girls’ school in the settlement in tribute to his support.
The amounts given by the Kushners were small; $5,000 here, $10,000 there, according to Internal Revenue Service filings. But they constitute another piece in the puzzle of how the Trump administration will approach one of the Middle East’s most intractable conflicts.
There are growing signs that Trump is poised to upend decades of U.S. foreign policy on dealing with Israelis and Palestinians, giving Israel a freer hand to build settlements and relocating the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem.
Several of Trump’s advisers have said they do not regard settlements as illegitimate or obstacles to peace. Unlike President Barack Obama, who pushed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to temporarily freeze some settlement construction on land seized by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war, Trump appears less likely to pressure Israel to constrain its building.
“I think it is safe to say that we will see diminished American efforts to promote traditional diplomacy, traditional critique of Israeli settlement activity or the need to resume some peace process with the Palestinians,” said Robert Satloff, executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a nonpartisan think tank.
At the same time, Trump said in an interview with The New York Times that he would “love” to be the president who finally made peace between Israel and the Palestinians; he has said it would be the “ultimate deal.”
Trump has also said he would move the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, something almost no country in the world has done because Jerusalem is disputed. Both the Israelis and the Palestinians claim it, or part of it, as their capital, and the U.S. position for decades has been that its status must be resolved through negotiations.
Past U.S. presidents made similar pledges about relocating the U.S. embassy. But all concluded such a step would not only provoke Palestinians, but also unsettle Arab allies throughout the region.
After his appointment was announced, Friedman stated he looked forward to forging the U.S. bond with Israel “from the U.S. embassy in Israel’s eternal capital, Jerusalem.”
Friedman also has voiced opposition to the so-called two-state solution, the existence of an Israeli and a Palestinian state living side by side in peace, which has been the basis of U.S. policy since the 1950s and the framework for peace negotiations in that part of the world. At a rally shortly before the U.S. election, he vowed that a Trump administration would never pressure Israel to accept a Palestinian state.