US envoy says ‘settlements are part of Israel’

During a Thursday televised interview, America’s ambassador to Israel says he thinks “the settlements are part of Israel.”

“I think that was always the expectation. When Resolution 242 was adopted in 1967, it was, and remains today the only substantive resolution that was agreed to by everybody,” Ambassador David Friedman tells Walla News.

“The idea was that Israel would be entitled to secure borders… The 1967 borders were viewed by everybody as not secure. So Israel would retain a meaningful portion of the West Bank, and it would return that which it didn’t need for peace and security. There was always supposed to be some notion of expansion into the West Bank, but not necessarily expansion into the entire West Bank; and I think that’s exactly what Israel has done. You know, they’re only occupying 2% of the West Bank. There’s important nationalistic, historical and religious significance to those settlements and I think the settlers view themselves as Israelis, and Israel views the settlers as Israelis.”

Asked if some of the settlements would have to “go down” in a future peace deal with the Palestinians, Friedman responded “wait and see.”

The ambassador was then asked when Israelis could expect the White House to put forward a peace initiative, Friedman speculated that there would be one “within months.” However, he qualified his statement, saying “we’re not holding ourselves to any deadline rule. We’ll try and get it done right, not fast.”

After being pushed to confirm whether progress has been made by the Trump administration, the ambassador responded in the affirmative.

— Jacob Magid