Donald Trump picks pro-settlement bankruptcy lawyer for Israel ambassador

US President-elect Donald Trump has named bankruptcy lawyer David Friedman as the new US ambassador to Israel.

A statement by Trump's transition team said Friedman's "strong relationships in Israel will form the foundation of his diplomatic mission".

Friedman, who had recently served on the President-elect’s advisory team on the Middle East, said that he looked forward to delivering Trump’s pledge to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and moving the US embassy there. The move would be a highly controversial, symbolic and potentially explosive gesture in the Middle East, as the status of Jerusalem is one of the issues in long-stalled Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.

Israel occupied East Jerusalem in the 1967 Middle East war and considers the entire city its indivisible capital, but Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state. Earlier peace negotiations had envisaged a divided city.

The United Nations does not recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital, and the US embassy has been located in Tel Aviv for decades.

Friedman serves as President of the American Friends of Bet El Institutions, which funds settlements in the West Bank, according to the Guardian newspaper. The newspaper added that Friedman disagrees with the general international consensus that the settlements are illegal and he opposes a ban on settlement construction on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem. And he has long supported an undivided Jerusalem as the Israeli capital.

Friedman is also a fervent opponent to another orthodoxy of US foreign policy, the “two-state solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in which the territory would be shared.

“That’s the ‘two-state solution’ – an illusion that serves the worst intentions of both the United States and the Palestinian Arabs. It has never been a solution, only a narrative. But even the narrative itself now needs to end,” Friedman wrote on the website for the religious Zionist network, Arutz Sheva.

The Israeli newspaper, Ha’aretz, described Friedman’s views as being on the far right of the Israeli political spectrum, more hardline than Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

J Street, a liberal pro-Israel group based in Washington, reportedly said it was "vehemently" opposed to the nomination of Friedman.