Trump's Israel advisor questions wisdom of two-state solution

 

A PALESTINIAN woman holds up a knife in the Gaza Strip.. (photo credit:REUTERS)[link]

By MICHAEL WILNER

WASHINGTON -- American attempts to broker a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians are like "forcing a square peg into a round hole," one of Donald Trump's two top Israel advisors, David Friedman, wrote in a letter on Wednesday, in which he repeatedly questioned the viability of the effort.

Responding to a note from Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, Friedman said that "the numerous proposals and initiatives for a two-state solution over the years have brought neither peace nor security to the State of Israel."

Jacobs' letter expressed alarm at the Trump campaign's apparent willingness to entertain a permanent Israeli presence, or perhaps annexation of, the West Bank.

"Both peoples are entitled to live in peace and dignity," Friedman said, "and both peoples are being deprived of those fundamental rights because of one thing and one thing only– radical Islamic jihadism, a cancer that infects Israel and much of the rest of the world."

A bankruptcy expert, Friedman was named a top Israel advisor by Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, alongside Jason Greenblatt, executive vice president and chief legal officer of the Trump Organization.

"No re-allocation of land will cure this scourge, and, indeed, Israel knew no peace from 1948 to 1967 when it did not even control Judea and Samaria," he added.

Friedman asserted that both Israeli and Palestinian majorities now prefer "Israeli rule to a nascent Palestinian state," and characterized the two-state solution as an effort to "divide Israel in two, leaving it without defensible borders."...http://www.jpost.com/US-Elections/Trumps-Israel-advisor-questions-wisdom-of-two-state-solution-459854