Trump's envoy to Israel is ready to slay some sacred cows - Jeff Jacoby

Trump's envoy to Israel is ready to slay some sacred cows - Jeff Jacoby

One of Trump's more heartening appointments: "David Friedman avidly supports expanding Israeli settlements in the West Bank, unequivocally rejects a 'two-state solution' to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and strongly believes the US embassy in Israel should be moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Those positions put Friedman - Donald Trump's bankruptcy lawyer and close friend - sharply at odds with the US foreign-policy establishment and entrenched conventional wisdom. So when the president-elect announced on Thursday that Friedman was his choice to be the next ambassador to Israel, alarm bells started clanging....

"Friedman's view is that US policy should be sharply reoriented - away from pressuring Israel to keep taking more 'risks for peace,' and toward pressuring the Palestinians to abandon their oft-stated ambition of eliminating the Jewish state. The incoming Trump administration, Friedman explained recently, 'doesn't see much opportunity for progress until the Palestinians renounce violence and accept Israel as a Jewish state. That's really a prerequisite.'"