According to him, previous administrations have struggled to bring the Palestinians to the negotiating table. The wait for the Palestinians to agree to negotiations before proceeding gave a veto on the process, Mr. Friedman said, which only encouraged them to make unreasonable demands.
‘A flood of refugees to Israel? It will never happen, “he said. “Are you dividing Jerusalem? It’s just never going to happen. Is Israel praising certain parts of its biblical heartland? Never going to happen. ”
He said the White House had ” injected an extremely necessary dose of realism into the Palestinian soul on what is feasible and what is not. ‘
The Palestinians beg to differ.
Husam Zomlot, who headed the Palestinian diplomatic mission in Washington until it was closed, said Mr. Friedman’s sense of accomplishment was delusional. He did not improve on the American influence on the conflict, but Mr. Friedman reduced it to almost zero, but hopes for a two-state solution were dashed.
“He was the American mob in our Capitol,” he said, referring to the recent uprising in Washington. “The same logic, the same behavior. This is Friedman. And just as Congress did, the Biden government will have to completely wipe the floor of American and Palestinian relations and the peace process. ”
Mr. Friedman claimed that the Trump peace plan, by setting the requirements for financial transparency, human rights and other norms for the Palestinians to obtain state capture, was actually a gift to the Palestinian people that would “make their quality of life much more bearable”. According to Israel, Israel’s warming relations with Arab states will ‘open the imagination of the Palestinians to what may be’.
He also insisted that the Trump administration had never attempted to overthrow Mr. To help Netanyahu – although the recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, to name one plum that is widely regarded as a gift from the campaign, came just two weeks before the first of it. voices.