Sovereignty over Judea and Samaria but no voting rights for Palestinians, Friedman says

Israel should apply sovereignty over Judea and Samaria but not enable Palestinians living there to participate in national elections, former US Ambassador David Friedman said in a conference hosted by the Knesset Israel Victory Caucus in Jerusalem on Tuesday.

Friedman, who served as former US president current Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's ambassador in Israel, argued in his speech that the move would not constitute apartheid, as it was similar to the status of Puerto Rico, whose residents are US citizens who do not participate in US national elections, but instead have autonomous self-government.

Friedman argued that this solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would ensure the preservation of two Israeli Basic Laws: on the one hand, it would adhere to Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty (1992), as Israel would ensure basic rights, dignity and liberty to all Palestinian citizens; on the other hand, it would adhere to Basic Law: Israel - the Nation State of the Jewish People, in that that exercising the right to national self-determination in the State of Israel would remain unique to the Jewish people.

Friedman commended a declarative decision last week by the Knesset that opposed a Palestinian state, but said that it was not enough to only rule out bad solutions, and there needed to be a proactive solution so that Israel could determine its own future and not have solutions forced upon it.

Friedman also argued that there currently was an opportunity to follow through with the plan due to a "convergence of faith and politics." The former ambassador explained that in the past, there were those who believed that Israel's right to the land was based purely on God's promise in the Bible, and others who based their support of Israel only on it being the sole state of the Jewish people. The former supported applying sovereignty to Judea and Samaria, while the latter tended to support the two-state solution, he said.

Faith takes over

Now, however, and especially after the October 7 Hamas massacre, more Israelis were susceptible to the faith-based approach, and therefore to the idea of applying Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank.

The conference was hosted by the Knesset Israel Victory Caucus in cooperation with the Middle East Forum Israel. The caucus's leaders are MKs Ohad Tal (Religious Zionist Party) and Evgeny Sova (Yisrael Beytenu). Other officials who participated in the conference included MK Simcha Rothman (RZP) and former MK Zvika Hauser.