It has been almost a year since US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman completed his service. In an interview with JNS, Friedman – who recently joined former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin's new investment fund, Liberty Strategic, as its Israel representative, and established the Friedman Center-Peace through Strength – talks about his years with the administration of former US President Donald Trump and plans for the future.

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Q: How do you feel now that you are out of office?

" I miss it. We accomplished a lot, but there there are still a lot of good things that we still could have accomplished. With God's help, we'll have a chance to come back."

Q: Did President Trump ever speak to you about his disappointment in the predominantly Democratic Jewish vote?

"Yes, and he did so publicly, as well. He was the best US president that Israel ever had. Domestically, as well, he spoke out very strongly against anti-Semitism. He felt that, given how much he did for Israel and to fight anti-Semitism, more Jews should have voted for him. However, he did receive more Jewish votes in Florida than any Republican before him. So, it's a mixed picture. But he definitely was disappointed."

Q: In hindsight, is there anything you would have done differently?

"I'm pretty satisfied that we did as much as we could to strengthen the US-Israel relationship. Had we known that we were only going to be in office for four years, we might have accelerated our efforts, some of which took a long time, due to their complexity."

Q: What about the current US administration and international efforts where Israel and the Palestinians are concerned?

"I believe that the US will respect Israel if Israel respects itself. If Israel decides for itself what its long-range goals and values are – with regard to its boundaries or other critical issues – the world ultimately will respect it. Israel must do what is best for Israel, just like every other country does, and worry less about the reactions of others."

Q: What is your reaction to the recent spat between Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz and the US administration over the former's designation of six Palestinian NGOs as terrorist organizations?

"I know Gantz very well, as I worked with him when I was ambassador. I also know the Shin Bet [security service] very well, as I worked with it, too. Neither would act out of political motives. If they say that they have evidence of illegal activity on the part of the organizations in question, I am confident that this evidence exists."

Q: Do you think that Israel missed an opportunity, during the Trump administration, to annex Judea and Samaria?

"During those four years, I was very conscious of the opportunity and the cost of such a move. It was not cost-free, since there were many people in Washington who opposed full sovereignty. I'm not even sure that everyone in Israel is in favor of annexing the entire area of Judea and Samaria. I have never seen anyone in Israel discussing annexing Ramallah or other parts of Areas A and B. Israel was on the path to annexing parts of Judea and Samaria, not all of it – roughly half or Area C.

"Then came the choice of whether you go forward with that, or take advantage of the breakthrough with the United Arab Emirates, which said that it was ready to make peace with Israel, but that Israel would have to hold off on full sovereignty in the meanwhile, not forever. From the American perspective, this was much more attractive. Judging by Israeli polling, it was much more attractive to Israel, as well.

"You have to remember this was at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. The idea of doing something so politically charged at a time when the economy was a mess–with. El Al not flying and so on – was problematic. And 90% of Israelis supported normalizing relations with the UAE. When that presented itself, though the sovereignty movement didn't get pushed away, it got slowed down. There isn't any stipulation in the agreements with the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan that forbids Israel from applying full sovereignty to Judea and Samaria.

Q: How would you rate Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennet's performance?

"My interests are solely in the relationship between Israel and the US, not to immerse myself in Israeli politics."

Q: The mission statement of the Friedman Center says it will follow the Trump peace plan. Yet, in this "Peace to Prosperity" plan, a future Palestinian state is mentioned several times. And most Israelis view such a state as an existential threat. How do you reconcile the two?

"According to the Trump peace plan, Israel will retain perpetual security control from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea; military control of the airspace; and control of the electromagnetic spectrum. We said to the Palestinians, 'Look, there are 2 million of you living here. You will get better infrastructure; you will get better civilian control over your buildings; you will have better opportunities in ways to find how Israelis and Palestinians can work together.'

"The intention never was to give them full control over any territory. In fact, compared to Area A now, which is under full Palestinian control, that actually was scaled back, so that Israel would regain security control over the entire region of Judea and Samaria.

"The Abraham Accords were unique in its ability to achieve peace for peace, and you see how well it's working. There has been a misconception over the years that people think that the Arab-Israeli conflict is a fight over real estate. It is not, and we [in the Trump administration] never thought it was. It is a battle over whether or not the Palestinians can accept the idea of a Jewish state anywhere between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Until that issue gets resolved – and I don't see any progress made on that – I think that all these discussions about land are mistaken.

"We think there are two different issues that relate to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict: human rights and dignity, which we should advance as much as we can. And there is security, which Israel cannot compromise on, because if you put any kind of Palestinian state inside this territory, it would be an existential threat to Israel."

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Q: There are those who say that striking Iran to destroy its nuclear capability would be treating a symptom, not the disease and that the only way to guarantee that Iran forfeits its desire for nuclear weapons is regime change. What's your position?

"Regime change is almost impossible to implement from the outside; it must come from within Iran. The United States should be re-imposing maximum sanctions, to force Iran into an acceptable deal. Sanctions were working and will continue to work if reinstated."

Q: President Donald Trump blasted the Biden administration for its sudden withdrawal from Afghanistan. But it was Trump who said in April 2020 that by May, all American troops would be evacuated. How do you explain that?

"The conditions required for withdrawal under the Trump administration would have resulted in the evacuation of US soldiers, citizens and allies, and a return of American property, before the withdrawal. The plan was structured very differently from that which ensued under Biden."

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

The post 'I believe the US will respect Israel if Israel respects itself' appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

Instead of laying the groundwork for the creation of a Palestinian state that would live in peace alongside Israel, many across the political spectrum in Israel now believe that the Gaza withdrawal of more than 8,500 Jews in August 2005 serves as a costly case study demonstrating the implications of evacuating lands and turning them over to Arab control.

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Many of the assumptions proposed by Israel's military establishment ahead of the withdrawals have proven false, while the social impact of the evacuations have left deep scars on many of the Jewish residents who lost their homes in the experiment.

Maj. Gen. (res.) Gershon Hacohen led the IDF's 36th Division that was responsible for carrying out the disengagement. At the time, he personally opposed the move, yet still carried out his assigned duties as a commanding officer.

"In a way, I now see the disengagement from Gaza as sort of a miracle from heaven," Hacohen told JNS.

"Just imagine if Hamas would have remained quiet for several years after the disengagement; there would have been a general consensus in Israel to disengage from Judea and Samaria. No one in his right mind in Israel will now agree to a disengagement from Judea and Samaria except for a few left-wing radicals."

Hacohen explains that the military assumptions that were asserted by proponents of the withdrawal from the security community have been proven "totally untrue."

The first assumption, he said, is that "territorial separation between Israelis and Palestinians, including massive evacuation of Jewish West Bank neighborhoods, will delineate borders, reduce friction and create stability."

Rather than lead toward a peaceful coexistence between neighbors, Hacohen said that "on the contrary, massive evacuation from Gaza gave Hamas a chance to fortify itself and make life for Israelis miserable."

He said that leading up to the controversial withdrawal, Israel's security establishment insisted that if security broke down, "the Israeli government would not hesitate to decide to embark on any necessary military operation;" that "the IDF will be able to remove this security threat within days;" and that any such an operation would be supported with "broad international backing."

When asked why he implemented the disengagement if he opposed it at the time, Hacohen told JNS that he felt if not for him, "it would have been a million times worse."

As he explained, "if the struggle in Gush Katif would have escalated to a point where soldiers would have been killed or injured severely, the settlement movement would have been delegitimized by the masses, and Sharon would have no problem evacuating the settlers from Judea and Samaria. I made sure that did not happen."

Broken hearts, shattered faith

Aside from the security setback of the Gaza withdrawal, former Gush Katif Regional Council member Yigal Kirzenshaft told JNS that the evacuation has taken a severe toll on the displaced community and ruined a model, albeit a flawed one, of integration between Jews and Arabs.

He said the government has done a less-than-satisfactory job of compensating the evacuees and helping them rebuild their lives, now 14 years after the disengagement. "They promised us full compensation and said that there will be a solution for everyone, but it turned out bollocks; they really never had any solutions."

Kirzenshaft related that the expulsion broke up some of the families who left. "The divorce rate increased, and it shattered the faith of many. Most of those expelled belonged to a national religious community to whom the value of Eretz Israel was sacred.

"The heartbreak of the expulsion even caused many to fall ill and die prematurely. These are young people who died from heartbreak."

Kirzenshaft added that "most of the residents were owners of greenhouses, where they grew and exported vegetables with a very high turnover rate. One acre produced 20 tons of tomatoes. It was a supernatural blessing, despite the fact that before we came it was a desert, total desolate. Now it reverted to its former state of total desolation and serves as a safe haven for terrorists."

"When we lived in Gush Katif, it was good for the Jews and for the Arabs," said Kirzenshaft. "The Arabs of Gaza were employed by the Jewish farmers and had a decent income to provide for their families. They did not want us to leave. Just recently, someone told me that one of the Arabs who worked in one of our greenhouses is now trying to grow a greenhouse on his own, but with no success."

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

The post IDF general who helped carry out disengagement calls it 'a failed experiment' appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.