Trump's Israel ambassador is pro-settlement bankruptcy lawyer

Source: The Guardian

David Friedman is fervent critic of two-state solution, backs an undivided Jerusalem as Israels capital and once represented Trumps failing hotels

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David Friedman, who had more recently served on the president-elects advisory team on the Middle East, said that he looked forward to delivering Trumps pledge to recognise Jerusalem as Israels capital and moving the US embassy there. The move would be a highly controversial, symbolic and potentially explosive gesture in the Middle East, as the status of Jerusalem is one of the issues in long-stalled Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.

Friedman serves as president of the American Friends of Bet El Institutions, which funds settlements in the West Bank. He disagrees with the general international consensus that the settlements are illegal and he opposes a ban on settlement construction on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem. And he has long supported an undivided Jerusalem as the Israeli capital.

snip

Friedman, like Trump, is an admirer of Vladimir Putin. Also like the president-elect he has portrayed the Russian leader as fighting the Islamic State in Syria, although very little of the Russian war effort has actually been focused on Isis.

Vladimir Putin gets it. He may be a thug, as he was recently described by Senator Rubio, but he knows how to identify a national objective, execute a military plan, and ultimately prevail, Friedman wrote in November last year.



Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/dec/15/trump-israel-ambassador-david-friedman?CMP=share_btn_tw

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Further right than Netanyahu and, no surprise, another Putin admirer.