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U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman 's Wide-Ranging Interview in his Jerusalem Office

(Times of Israel) Can the Israel-Palestinian "ultimate peace deal" be reached? The question is whether or not we're able to put something on the table that captures the imagination and the hopes of the Palestinian people, without jeopardizing Israel or its security, its own objectives. I'm optimistic that such a proposal can be put on the table. And I am also optimistic that ultimately people are smart enough and of sufficiently good will that they will choose something more attractive, more opportunistic, more hopeful, if given the opportunity. The jury is certainly out on the Palestinian Authority and its ability to deliver. I can't speak for them. I can speak for the leadership in Gaza and say they're absolutely the wrong leadership to accomplish anything productive. Do millions of Palestinians have a "right of return" to what is today Israel? Every war creates refugees. The War of Independence [in 1948] created hundreds of thousands of refugees that left Israel for other lands. It also created a roughly equal number of Jewish refugees who were unceremoniously booted out of countries from Morocco all the way to Egypt, many of whom lived middle class or upper middle class or even wealthy existences and were kind of thrown out without shirts on their backs. As to every refugee, the goal ought to be to enable them to acclimate and to enter society in wherever they landed. Tthe definition of refugees that is adopted by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees is a far more appropriate definition than the definition that's used by UNRWA. I'd be very surprised if anybody in the administration had a different view. Bipartisan U.S. support for Israel. Israel should never be a partisan issue. Everybody, on both sides, says that Israel should be a bipartisan issue. I am going to continue to work as hard as I can to keep it bipartisan. But bipartisan does not mean finding the lowest common denominator and pursuing that just in a blind effort to find consensus. The argument that I hear from some Democrats that Republicans are seizing the pro-Israel mantle is true, to a certain extent. There's no question Republicans support Israel more than Democrats. Just because you want to make something bipartisan doesn't mean that it becomes bipartisan... Democrats can say, 'We want to be bipartisan on Israel,' and I wish them every success in doing so. But there is a large Democratic constituency right now that is not pro-Israel. They have to acknowledge it, and they have to fix it, or try to fix it.
2018-06-01 00:00:00
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