US envoy sees peace hope after Jerusalem embassy move

Palestinian anger ‘will change over time because they will understand the US continues to extend its hand in peace,’ David Friedman says

Despite Palestinian outrage over Monday’s opening of the US Embassy in Jerusalem, Washington’s ambassador to Israel said that there is still hope for peace in the region.

“They are not reacting well,” Ambassador David Friedman said Saturday of the Palestinians, who view the eastern part of Jerusalem as the capital of their future state.

Israel claims all of Jerusalem as its capital.

US President Donald Trump’s decision to move the embassy from Tel Aviv broke with decades of international consensus that Jerusalem’s status should be settled as part of a two-state peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians.

Tens of thousands of Palestinians are expected to gather along the border between Gaza and Israel on Monday to protest, among other things, the embassy opening. The demonstrations are part of Hamas’s weeks-long effort to galvanize Palestinians to march on the Israeli border, an effort that has led to 54 reported Palestinian deaths in clashes with Israeli forces.

But Friedman told Fox News host Jeanine Pirro that the Palestinian mood “will change over time because they will understand that the United States continues to extend its hand in peace and people need to focus on what’s important, the quality of life, more infrastructure, more security, better hospitals.”

He said the US “is there to help the Palestinians” and “there is no basis” to think the embassy move will work against peace.

“I think we’re gonna make progress,” he told Pirro, who is in Jerusalem for the embassy opening.

Friedman in the past has been a supporter of Israeli West Bank settlements.

The Palestine Liberation Organization, whose office in Washington is the de facto Palestinian mission to the US, has decried the US embassy move as a “provocation to all Arabs,” and the opening falls on May 14 which this year marks 70 years since Israel’s declaration of independence — which Palestinians call Nakba, their “day of catastrophe.”

Friedman confirmed that Trump will “be there on video” at the embassy ceremony and that Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, a senior White House aide, will speak in person.