I blogged fifteen months about the U.S. presidential election. I wrote nearly thirty posts expressing my objection to Donald Trump as president. Yet I believe he has a superior position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict than nearly all other non-Jewish parties think. He’s got half of the puzzle right; he just needs to get the rest of it put together. If I may say so without appearing arrogant, that’s where I come in with my book, Palestine Is Coming: The Revival of Ancient Philistia (1990).
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump will be inaugurated into the U.S. presidency next month, on January 20, 2017. With Trump as president, there will be many firsts. He has no political experience other than his recent presidential campaign. He has not served in the U.S. military. As a multi-billionaire real estate mogul from New York City, he will be by far the wealthiest U.S. president ever. He is married to a woman 24 years younger than him who has been a celebrated international model. The list could go on and on.
Among other things in preparation for his presidency, Donald Trump has been busy selecting his cabinet. He announced David Friedman as his ambassador to Israel. Trump’s Orthodox Jewish son-in-law, Jared Kushner, may be involved in this as well. Donald Trump will be very pro-active concerning Israel and perhaps the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But then, just about all U.S. presidents for the past generation have involved themselves with the latter. All have failed except perhaps for Jimmy Carter accomplishing the Camp David Accords. That resulted in a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt. But no other Arab states agreed with it, and for a long time Egypt suffered from it in relation to other Arab states.
David Friedman is a New York bankruptcy lawyer with no political experience. He also is an Orthodox Jew. Friedman has been on the city council of Bet El. It’s an Orthodox Jewish settlement in the West Bank located north of Jerusalem and beside Ramallah, the largest Palestinian city in the West Bank and the headquarters of the Palestinian Authority which governs all Palestinians living in the West Bank. Mr. Friedman advocates the very radical position of Israel unilaterally annexing the entire West Bank. Of course, that would not only anger Palestinians very extremely, but it would strongly upset just about all Arab states. They consider Palestinians their “brothers.” They try to support them in their desire to establish their own state. Mr. Friedman also advocates moving the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
Both of these positions advocated by Mr. Friedman are totally the opposite of long-standing U.S. policy regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The U.S. has always claimed that such moves would destroy the peace process between Israelis and Palestinians because of the aspirations of the Palestinians. They want to establish a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with East Jerusalem as their capital. But they have been trying to make this happen for so long. Next October will the fiftieth anniversary of this effort. Palestinians are now farther from that happening than they have ever been before. You’d think that fifty years of failure would cause you to conclude you have the wrong thinking. I don’t mean they think wrong about having a Palestinian state. It’s that they need to figure out another place to put it.
That’s the other half of the puzzle Trump needs. He agrees with Friedman that the U.S. embassy needs to be moved to Jerusalem. He’s been campaigning about that. And Trump does not seem to be opposed to Friedman’s view of Israel annexing the West Bank. Trump says the Jewish settlements, even increasing them and their size, are not an impediment to peace with Palestinians. Well, no and yes. No, if you’re talking about a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. Yes, if a Palestinian state will be in the land of Philistines. That’s where I think it should be and where I think the Bible says it will be, with all of the West Bank (=Judea and Samaria) being part of Israel. See my book. Right now, half of it is free reading as an ebook on my website kermitzarley.com. See ten update articles there too.
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