Former US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, Chairman of the Jerusalem Conference in New York, sat down on Sunday for a special interview at the Arutz Sheva-Israel National News Jerusalem Conference in New York City.
Friedman started by discussing his new One Jewish State project, which opposes a two-state solution and seeks to work with Israel to find an alternative solution. "After October 7th, the first time I heard Joe Biden say 'We need a two-state solution,' I thought that we have to respond immediately. This is so tone-deaf. Especially when we had a dry-run; we had a dry-run in Gaza, not a single Jew living there, not a single IDF soldier on the ground there, billions of dollars being given to them, whether from the US, UNRWA, the EU, with a western-facing Meditterainian sea-front. And they took all the money and either pocketed it or they built terror tunnels or weapons. So if you were teetering on a two-state solution before October 7th, anyone who's looking at this today has to understand, that there can not, under any circumstances be a two-state solution, and we have to fight it."
As to a viable alternative for a two-state solution, the former Ambassador has one clear solution: "We in America have to help Israel grow more comfortable with the idea of Israeli sovereignty in Judea and Samaria." He emphasized that sovereignty should be applied not only over Area C but over the entire area.
According to him, such a solution would please both sides of the aisle: "You can support this if you're on the right because you're happy about sovereignty; you can support this on the left if you think that Palestinians should have a better life; you can support this if you're secular because you just see it as the only way that Israel will ever have security; or you can support this if you're religious and you think that this is the land given by G-d to the Jewish people, as I do."
Friedman negates the portrayal of such a plan as a "land grab" where Israel would only claim Area C. "What we need to do is to expand upon the Abraham Accords to go to our friends in the Gulf and say to them: 'Look, you keep talking about a Palestinian state - you know that's not going to work, we know that's not going to work.'"
He believes that the Saudis truly object to a two-state solution, understanding that the problems that would stem from a Palestinian state would adversely affect the kingdom. According to him, the Biden administration is the one pushing such a solution, hiding behind Saudi normalization as a way to reach such a plan. "At the end of the day, everyone in the Middle East knows that a Palestinian state is a terror state. It's a rebirth of Hamas, it's a rebirth of the worst forces that confront, not just Israel, but the moderate Sunni nations as well."
Regarding the "day after" the war in Gaza, the former Ambassador explains that he believes the term is flawed since the war will not end overnight. "You're not going to flick a switch and the war is over. Israel has destroyed about 24 battalions, but destroying a battalion only means that you've killed more or arrested more than half, you've destroyed the command and control. There are hundreds and hundreds of terrorists floating around the Gaza Strip, there are four battalions in the south. There may come a point where the military strategy changes, but we're talking about a radicalized population that gets no help from anybody."
He explains: "When Syria had a civil war, a million Syrian refugees were dispersed around Europe. They were given a place to stay. Egypt will not take a single Gazan refugee, Jordan will not take a single Gazan refugee, nobody wants them. So this idea about 'a day after,' I say give Israel some help, what does that mean 'a day after?' Israel is the only country that has an interest, an incentive, and a capability of keeping Gaza from being radicalized. No one else can. It's not going to be Hamas, it's not going to be the PA, it's not going to be the UN. The UN was supposed to demilitarize Hezbollah in 2006, UNIFIL is still there today, and they (Hezbollah) still have 100,000 missiles, they're the second strongest army in the Middle East. Whether it's the UN or the EU, or any of these Arab countries, it doesn't work."
Regarding the emerging proposal for a deal between Israel and Hamas, Friedman said: "I think the pressure Biden is putting on Netanyahu right now is extraordinary. I think that what he did on Friday, when he announced an Israeli proposal, at a time when it was Shabbat in Israel, and Netanyahu wasn't even supposed to respond to it, forcing Israel to respond after it was already Shabbat. A proposal that Israel never made, or certainly leaving out, the critical piece of it, which is that Hamas will be destroyed. I think the pressure is tremendous, and I think that Netanyahu is being confronted also by America and others with this false choice, that you can either with the war or free the hostages, but not both. And I've never understood that conflict, especially when dealing with Hamas." He emphasized that the way to get the hostages back it to place the maximum amount of pressure on Hamas.
Friedman made a revelation about the White House's decision-making: "Down the hall from the Oval Office is the National Security Council, which is the President's personal advisor on security, they have a huge amount of influence. The number two guy in the NSC, advising on the Middle East, is a guy by the name of Maher Bitar, he is one of the founders of Students for Justice in Palestine. That's the guy who's down the hall from the Oval Office."
With this, he noted that "I don't think it's fair to criticize Joe Biden personally because I'm not sure that he knows what he's doing, I'm totally not sure. I think that he's under the influence of Tony Blinken, he's under the influence of Jake Sullivan, under the influence of Maher Bitar, of Hady Amr, who runs the Palestinian office, that we never had, in the Embassy. They believe in the two-state solution, as the mother's milk of American diplomacy, and they believe that Netanyahu is against everything they want. They're going to push him out that's what they want to do, beginning with Chuck Schumer, and continuing with this entire administration."