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U.S. Assistance to the Palestinians Was "a Bridge to Nowhere"
(Medialine) U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman interviewed by Felice Friedson - "For some odd reason, prior administrations decided to indulge Palestinian fantasies about what could happen that were totally out of touch with reality." "I spent most of yesterday in closed door meetings, with [U.S. Treasury] Secretary Mnuchin, Prime Minister Netanyahu, [and] the finance minister of the United Arab Emirates....I'm in the room and I'm seeing people that really, really want to advance the ball as far as it will go.....They were almost...tripping over each other to come up with more and more ideas about what could be done. The sky is truly the limit, and it's fun to watch, because...we don't need to police this or oversee it; they're doing that on their own." "I think the Palestinians are sort of in one of those final stages of denial. It's hard to watch. It's completely self-defeating. There was a leadership problem. There was significant corruption at the top....I've traveled with Prime Minister Netanyahu to the United States. I've been on his plane a few times....He flies like a regular commercial passenger. And Mahmoud Abbas, where the Palestinian GDP per capita is maybe 1/15th that of Israel, he flies around in a $75 million Boeing business jet....You've got a lot of concentration of wealth among the upper elite and a lot of people are really unhappy about it." "America has provided the Palestinians with more financial, humanitarian assistance per capita than any other place in the world by far. And we have given more money to the Palestinians compared to any other nation by a power of at least five compared to every other country. So, we've got nothing to apologize for in terms of our assistance to the Palestinians....It is a bridge to nowhere. The Palestinians want to take, but they're not willing to really engage in a serious way." "We want to help the Palestinian people. By the way, the State of Israel wants to help the Palestinian people. It is in Israel's interest for the Palestinian people to be healthy, to be prosperous, to have hope and optimism about their lives....Enough of the histrionics. Enough of the tantrums. Just sit down and have civilized discussions on serious issues and there'll be progress."