Friedman: Plan ‘preserves Israel’s sovereignty over its biblical heartland’

The U.S. ambassador says the deal will provide the Palestinian people hope after decades of failure by the Palestinian leadership.

By World Israel News Staff

In an interview with CBN News last week, U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman said that the “Deal of the Century” is a win-win for everybody involved.

“There’s a lot here for everybody,” Friedman said. “It will preserve Israel’s sovereignty over its biblical heartland and it will create an opportunity for the Palestinians to live in peace and dignity and prosperity.”

“We think we threaded the needle. It’s a tough needle to thread but we’d like to think we got there,” he added.

The U.S ambassador believes the deal will provide the Palestinian people hope after decades of failure by the Palestinian leadership.

“The people within the territories, they are suffering,” he said. “The leadership has failed the Palestinian people for generations. They’ve become pawns in larger conflicts and the leadership has shown itself to be very adept at misdirecting the resources of the territory to their own pockets.”

Friedman said the U.S. is presenting a “hard offer” to the PA to see if they are serious about peace; by agreeing to stop terror payments and help deprive Hamas and Islamic Jihad of their weapons.

According to the U.S. ambassador, the region’s Arab states have a strong role in determining its success, pointing to the fact that ambassadors from the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Oman were in attendance during the plan’s rollout, says Friedman.

He also explained why it is important for Israel to have sovereignty over the settlements in Judea and Samaria.

“This area is in a very volatile part of the world and the last thing the world needs, the last thing the region needs is a failed Palestinian state overcome by ISIS, al-Qaeda or Hezbollah or somebody else,” Friedman said.

“So the fact that Israel retains its military overriding responsibility from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean gives me some comfort both from a political and security perspective but also from a religious perspective, that there is no retreat by the Jewish state from biblical territory,” he said.