JERUSALEM -- Israel has a right to annex at least some, but "unlikely all," of the West Bank, the U.S. ambassador, David Friedman, said in an interview, opening the door to U.S. acceptance of what would be viewed internationally as a provocative act.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has promised to begin annexing Jewish settlements in the West Bank, a move that would violate international law and could be a fatal blow to a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
"Under certain circumstances," Friedman said, "I think Israel has the right to retain some, but unlikely all, of the West Bank."
In a wide-ranging interview at his Jerusalem residence, Friedman also accused Palestinian leaders of wrongheadedly using "massive pressure" to deter business leaders from attending an economic conference that the administration is organizing this month in Bahrain, where it hopes to impress upon them the financial windfalls they can expect if they embrace the administration's peace plan.
And he said that the long-awaited U.S. peace plan was aimed at improving the quality of life for Palestinians but was unlikely to lead quickly to a "permanent resolution to the conflict."
But it was on annexation that Friedman's remarks were likely to be read most closely. Netanyahu promised just before Israel's April 9 election to begin annexing part of the West Bank, which Israel captured in 1967.
Much of the world considers Israeli settlements there illegal and would view annexation as compounding the crime. Israeli critics, including a group of respected former military and national-security officials, warn that annexation could lead to violence and require the military to occupy Palestinian urban areas for the first time in decades.
Friedman declined to say how the United States would respond if Netanyahu moved to annex West Bank land unilaterally.
"We really don't have a view until we understand how much, on what terms, why does it make sense, why is it good for Israel, why is it good for the region, why does it not create more problems than it solves," Friedman said. "These are all things that we'd want to understand, and I don't want to prejudge."
He accused President Barack Obama's administration, in allowing passage of a U.N. resolution in 2016 that condemned Israeli settlements as a "flagrant violation" of international law, of giving credence to Palestinian arguments "that the entire West Bank and East Jerusalem belong to them."
"Certainly Israel's entitled to retain some portion of it," he said of the West Bank.
Friedman, 60, who before taking his post was President Donald Trump's top bankruptcy lawyer, is said to be a driving force within the administration's Middle East team, which also includes Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser, and special envoy Jason Greenblatt, a former in-house counsel at the Trump Organization.
In the interview, he accused Palestinian politicians of trying to sabotage the Bahrain conference.
"It's unfair the way the Palestinians have described this as a bribe or as an attempt to buy off their national aspirations," he said. "It's not at all. It's an attempt to give life to their aspirations by creating a viable economy."
He insisted that Palestinian business operators would attend the conference were it not for "massive pressure" from Palestinian officials to intimidate them from attending.
The Trump administration has not publicly presented its peace plan, but it has portrayed the Bahrain conference as a prelude to the plan's first phase, which would focus on economic development of the occupied territories. It would be followed by a second phase focused on a political solution.
Palestinian leaders have rejected the idea, saying that there can be no economic peace without a political solution and that they do not trust any plan from the Trump administration, which has taken actions to favor Israel in the conflict. They also deny that they have pressured businesspeople to boycott the Bahrain conference.
Friedman had harsh words for the Palestinian Authority, led by President Mahmoud Abbas, saying that it had "a very, very poor track record on human rights" and that its institutions "don't give anyone in the region sufficient comfort that Palestinian autonomy is not threatening."
"The Palestinian leadership is really the difficulty right now," he said.
Friedman said the push for a peace plan was motivated by the belief that the dangers confronting Israel -- in Lebanon, Syria, Gaza and Iran -- were far greater than when the Oslo peace process began in the early 1990s. "The absolute last thing the world needs is a failed Palestinian state between Israel and Jordan," he said.
He said he did not believe the plan would promote a violent reaction among the Palestinians, and said the United States would coordinate closely with Jordan, which could face unrest among its large Palestinian population over a plan perceived as overly favorable to Israel.
He added that the plan would not be released if the administration believed it would do more harm than good. "We don't want to make things worse," he said. "Our goal is not to show how smart we are at the expense of people's safety."
Israel retaining security control in the West Bank should not be an impediment, he argued: Just as U.S. troops are stationed in Germany, Japan and Korea, "places where we were at war with that nation before we left our troops there," he said, "having boots on ground is not antithetical to peace."
A Section on 06/09/2019