Trump’s nominee for ambassador to Israel heckled in Senate
President Donald Trump’s nominee to be US ambassador to Israel faced repeated heckling at a Senate confirmation hearing on Thursday before he apologised for his stinging criticism of liberal American Jews and promised to be less inflammatory in an official capacity. David Friedman, a bankruptcy lawyer Trump has called a longtime friend and trusted adviser, has supported Jewish colony building and advocated the annexation of the West Bank, which Israel occupied from Jordan in the 1967 war.
Friedman repeatedly expressed regret for likening liberal American Jews to Jewish prisoners who worked for the Nazis during the Holocaust, telling the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in his opening statement, “I regret the use of such language.” Trump is following through on a promised shift in US policy toward Israel after years of friction between former President Barack Obama and Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu. The heated opposition to Friedman’s nomination erupted in the hearing room as Friedman began his opening statement, with several hecklers including a man who held up the Palestinian flag and shouted about Palestinian claims to historical Palestine.
“My grandfather was exiled,” the man said before being escorted out of the room. “Palestinians will always be in Palestine!” Democratic senators pressed Friedman on incendiary comments he made including calling Obama an anti-Semite and Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer, who is Jewish, an appeaser.
“Frankly the language you have regularly used against those who disagree with your views has me concerned about your preparedness to enter the world of diplomacy,” Ben Cardin, the senior Democrat on the committee, told the nominee.
Friedman acknowledged using overheated rhetoric as part of his passionate support for the Israeli regime, which has included financial support of Jewish colonies built on land claimed by Palestinians. He promised to avoid inflammatory comments as a US diplomat.
He told Cardin, “There is no excuse. If you want me to rationalise it or justify it, I cannot. These were hurtful words and I deeply regret them.” Cardin, citing Friedman’s criticism of Schumer as having done the “worst appeasement of terrorists since Munich,” retorted that those words were “beyond hurtful.” “We need a steady hand in the Middle East, not a bomb thrower,” admonished Tom Udall, another Democrat. Under questioning, Friedman tried to soften his positions on a number of hotbutton regional issues. While expressing scepticism of a two-state solution calling for the creation of Palestinian state next to Israel, he acknowledged it was the best option for peace. He said he did not personally support Israeli annexation of the West Bank and agreed with Trump’s view that colony activity “may not be helpful” to achieving peace. evasive about his support for a two-state solution.
Mostly, he appears to want to solidify Israeli control over the occupied West Bank and manage the conflict. That basically means maintaining the current situation of Palestinian cantons divided by growing Israeli colonies and surrounded by Israeli forces.
Netanyahu has referred to it as a “state-minus” — implying the Palestinians would get some state-like autonomy, and that would be enough. Critics call it a creeping one-state reality, and certainly not the “ultimate deal” that Trump says he hopes to achieve.
Some analysts chalk up Trump’s flippancy to a lack of knowledge, because one thing many Palestinians and Israelis do agree on is that a one-state formula will not bring peace.
“One state is not an option,” said Ghassan Khatib, a Palestinian political scientist at Birzeit University in the West Bank, noting that Israel, which was established to give Jews self-determination, would never give all Palestinians the vote. “We are talking two states or no solution, a continuation of the status quo,” he said.
Shaul Arieli, an Israeli expert on political geography who prepared maps for past negotiations with the Palestinians and is a member of Commanders for Israel’s Security, the group behind the billboard campaign, said “one state is impossible” for Israel. Demographically and economically, absorbing millions of comparatively poor Palestinians would destroy it, he said.
Results of a survey of Israelis and Palestinians released on Thursday, put out jointly by Tel Aviv University and Israeli and Palestinian research centres, indicated that 55 per cent of Israelis still support the notion of a two-state solution, while support among the Palestinians dropped to 44 per cent. But the numbers on both sides rose significantly when they were offered additional incentives like a broader regional peace between Israel and the Arab world. Among Palestinians, support rose for the ability to work freely in Israel even after the establishment of an independent state. The survey included a representative sample of 1,270 Palestinians and 1,207 Israelis. The Israeli idea of Palestinian statehood never included all of the attributes of full sovereignty. Israel insists on a demilitarised state, and Netanyahu says the Israeli military has to keep overall security control.
Together with other so-farintractable issues — like the fate of occupied Jerusalem and of Palestinian refugees — many experts have long said that the maximum Israel can offer does not meet the minimum Palestinian requirements.
Saeb Erekat, a senior Palestinian official, noted last week that the two-state solution “represents a painful and historic Palestinian compromise of recognising Israel over 78 per cent of historic Palestine.”
Weak leadership
President Mahmoud Abbas, of the Palestinian Authority, an interim government that has held sway in parts of the West Bank since the 1990s, is weakened by internal struggles and threatened by his rivals in Hamas.
Mahmoud Zahar, a member of Hamas and one of its founders in Gaza, said of Abbas in an interview last week: “He is wasting his time. He is wasting our time and helping the Israelis expand [colonies]. He is a traitor. He is a spy.”
Since then, Israel recently approved plans for thousands of new colonist homes in the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem and has moved to retroactively legalise colonist outposts that were built throughout the territory. The measures have further entrenched the occupation, now in its 50th year since Israel occupied the territory from Jordan in the 1967 war.
A growing number of rightwing Israeli ministers, including from Netanyahu’s Likud Party, are pushing to annex the blocs of colonies that Israel intends to incorporate within its borders under any future deal. Israel has also invested heavily in roads and infrastructure connecting and serving the West Bank colonies, now home to some 400,000 people.
Yet supporters of the twostate solution insist it still could be executed. Arieli, the political geographer, said Israel could keep 80 per cent of its West Bank colonists within its borders by swapping territory equal to about 4 per cent of the West Bank. Many of the remaining 20 per cent of colonists — roughly 30,000 families — would most likely agree to move back into Israel for compensation, he said.
- New York Times News Service