Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s adviser on Israeli affairs has argued Israel could annex the occupied Palestinian West Bank while “retaining its Jewish character,” claiming that “the whole idea that we have to jettison Judea and Samaria to retain the Jewish characteristics of Israel is not true.”

US Jewish progressive movement “If Not Now” demonstration against Trump at AIPAC Conference last March (Photo: Gili Getz)

In a video obtained by Israeli Channel 2, David Friedman, during a meeting with settlers “Samaria Regional Council” head Yossi Dagan, said Israel would maintain its Jewish majority even if it made the 1.7 million Palestinians living in the West Bank Israeli citizens.

Friedman asserted that “if you ask ten statisticians how many Arabs are living in the West Bank they couldn’t give you the right answers, because nobody really knows.” “The bottom line is under most calculations if you took the entire state of Israel from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea and you annexed all of Judea and Samaria into Israel, the Jewish population would still be about 65%. That’s the conventional wisdom right now,” he said. He noted that this excluded the Gaza Strip’s population.