David Friedman’s ‘extreme positions’ make him ‘unqualified for the position,’ former American envoys to Israel Pickering, Kurtzer, Walker, Cunningham and Harrop write Senate.

President Donald Trump’s controversial pick for U.S. ambassador to Israel said Thursday he regretted calling former President Barack Obama an anti-Semite and making other inflammatory remarks about the State Department and liberal Jewish groups.

“Friedman, until now Trump’s bankruptcy lawyer who has never engaged in public service, said that being ambassador to Israel is “the fulfillment of my life’s work.” But this job isn’t about personal fulfillment; it is about the painstakingly difficult work of representing the United States to a complicated ally smack in the middle of the world’s most volatile region,” writes Jane Eisner.

“The American president shocked many with his willingness to abandon the two-state paradigm. But that wasn’t the radical part of his message to Netanyahu and Israelis,” writes Haggai Matar.

“Donald Trump’s apparent readiness to accept a one-state solution to the Middle East conflict that would permanently rule out a Palestinian nation is emboldening rightwing Zionists in the US – both among Jewish Americans and the much larger pool of pro-Israeli evangelical Christians,” writes Ed Pilkington.

At his Senate confirmation hearing on Thursday, David Friedman faced a grilling about his ties to Beit El, a community north of Jerusalem located in the heart of the occupied territory Palestinians want for an independent state.

Many in the Palestinian territories, and across the region, were shaken by the president’s almost casual dismissal of the longstanding U.S. commitment to the eventual creation of a Palestinian state, a diplomatic bedrock known as the two-state solution.

A new interactive documentary -“The Invisible Walls of Occupation” invites you on a virtual tour of a Palestinian village, led by its residents.

A growing number of right-wing Israeli ministers, including from Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud Party, are pushing to annex the settlements that Israel intends to incorporate within its borders under any future deal.

Nasser al-Kidwa urges Palestinians to fight ‘patiently and slowly’ for rights and plays down calls for PA to take Israel to International Criminal Court.