United States Ambassador to Israel David Friedman boasted in a New York Post op-ed this week that President Donald Trump has successfully obtained Israel’s commitment to negotiate within a two-state framework.
Friedman’s Monday op-ed came in response to a recent piece in Foreign Policy magazine, titled “Biden Must Speak Out Against Israeli Annexation Plans Before It’s Too Late.”
The piece was co-written by Philip Gordon and Robert Malley, stalwarts of the US establishment and its policy agenda for the Middle East, and claimed that Trump’s “Deal of the Century” has derailed Washington’s long-time objective to partition Israel into two separate states.
Responding to Gordon and Malley, David Friedman asserted that “the Trump vision provides for a two-state solution.”
The ambassador also claimed the Trump administration to be “the first and only administration to have obtained Israel’s commitment to negotiate based upon specific terms, conditions and territorial dimensions that would lead to the creation of a Palestinian state.”
Friedman was also dismissive of concerns over Trump reportedly granting Jerusalem permission to apply full Israeli sovereignty to specific West Bank Jewish communities in exchange for Israel’s acceptance of the Trump plan in its totality.
“Under the Trump vision,” he argued. “Israel would be claiming sovereignty over a fraction of the West Bank, comprising territories that either are sparsely populated or overwhelmingly populated by Israeli Jews.”
“Israel wouldn’t be doing that to territories with significant Palestinian populations.”
In defending the Trump plan as being consistent with the US foreign policy establishment’s long standing agenda of splitting Israel into two states, Friedman further stated that it “gives Palestinians a clear path to statehood.”
The ambassador, a long time supporter of Jewish life in Israel’s disputed heartland, has long been touted by the Trump administration as a Jew fully committed to Jewish national interests.
More than Trump’s son-in-law/advisor Jared Kushner or former Mideast Envoy Jason Greenblatt, both prominent Jews who served on the team that crafted the administration’s plan, David Friedman has been the Trump administration figure perceived as most sympathetic to the Jewish communities in the Samaria and Judea regions.
By offering those who’ve never before had a seat at the diplomatic table with an accessible and sympathetic ear in the administration, Friedman has been successful at disarming many of the usual Judean voices of resistance to American two-state plans.
It’s unclear how self-aware Friedman is of his role but whenever Jewish national interests inevitably clash with US imperial interests in the region, the ambassador has worked hard to put a pro-Israel face on Trump policies. At times when Israeli leaders began to suspect the Trump plan would demand dividing the Jewish homeland, it was often David Friedman who assuaged fears and neutralized local opposition to the then-mysterious “Deal of the Century.”
Like many right-wing Jews who refuse to see the fundamental conflict of interests between Washington and Jerusalem, Friedman likely spent most of his life choosing to see Israel and the US as natural partners on the world stage. But his experience as ambassador should have taught him by now that loyalty to American Mideast policy will ultimately demand his betrayal of the Jewish people and homeland.
There’s no way to tell how long David Friedman’s own cognitive dissonance will prevent him from recognizing the contradictions inherent in his position until he ultimately reaches his personal “Pollard moment” of truth. At some point he’ll need to realize that no matter how personally supportive he might be of Israel’s claims to the cradle of Jewish civilization, his role as the empire’s official representative to the Jewish state will always require him to advance positions that demand partitioning the land of Israel and keeping Israel subservient to Washington’s interests in the region.
