Trump’s man for Israel causes anger by backing settlers
DONALD TRUMP has caused an angry backlash after giving the post of ambassador to Israel to his bankruptcy lawyer, who is a strong supporter of Israeli settlements.
The US president-elect’s decision to give the sensitive post to David Friedman, a Right-wing attorney who has no diplomatic experience, marks a dramatic shift in long-held US policy on the Middle East.
Mr Friedman opposes the two-state solution, where Israel exists alongside an independent Palestine, and has talked openly about replacing it with a one-state model where Israel annexes the occupied West Bank.
The 59-year-old has raised money for Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Much of the international community considers such settlements illegal and both the Bush and Obama administrations criticised them as obstacles to peace.
Mr Friedman also supports moving the US embas- sy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a symbolic move that both Democrat and Republican presidents have refused to take because of the political sensitivity of the city.
He has accused President Barack Obama of “blatant anti-Semitism” and said the US State Department, which he is about to join, has “a hundred-year history of antiSemitism”.
Mr Friedman is an Orthodox Jew who speaks fluent Hebrew. He has been Mr Trump’s bankruptcy lawyer for years and represented him as several of the property mogul’s casinos failed.
J Street, a US liberal Jewish organisation that supports the two-state solution, said it was “vehemently opposed” to Mr Friedman taking up the post.
Saeb Erekat, the secretary general of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation, doubted Mr Trump would move the embassy or allow Israel to annex parts of the West Bank. But he warned that such moves would send “this region down the path of chaos, lawlessness and extremism”.
The Yesha Council, which represents Israeli settlers in the West Bank and Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, both welcomed the nomination. A source said the premier was “pleased”, saying he “looks forward to working closely with him”.