Those holding out hope for peace in the Middle East may have to wait another four years. On Thursday, Donald Trump named David Friedman as his nominee for ambassador to Israel, handing one of the world’s most important diplomatic posts to his personal bankruptcy lawyer, a close friend with no diplomatic experience.

More important, Friedman is a pro-settlement extremist aligned with the farthest-right elements of Zionism. The orthodox New Yorker supports moving the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem (which both Israelis and Palestinians view as their rightful capital), dismisses the possibility of a two-state solution, and has likened liberal Jews who oppose the Israeli settlement movement to Nazi collaborators. “The kapos faced extraordinary cruelty and who knows what any of us would have done under those circumstances to save a loved one? But J Street? They are just smug advocates of Israel’s destruction delivered from the comfort of their secure American sofas—it’s hard to imagine anyone worse,” he wrote last year, referring to the left-leaning Jewish advocacy group.

“From where Friedman stands, most Israelis, never mind most American Jews, are more or less traitors.”

Given an opportunity to walk back his comments at a private forum this month, Friedman doubled down on his criticism of J Street. “They’re not Jewish, and they’re not pro-Israel,” he said, The New York Times reports.

In a statement praising his nomination, Trump’s White House transition team described Friedman as a “lifelong student of Israel’s history” who would bring the two nations closer together. “With Mr. Friedman’s nomination, President-elect Trump expressed his commitment to further enhancing the U.S.-Israel relationship and ensuring there will be extraordinary strategic, technological, military and intelligence cooperation between the two countries,” it read. In the international community and among centrist U.S.-Israeli experts, however, Friedman’s nomination immediately raised concerns that his hardline views would undermine longstanding diplomatic efforts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. J Street called him “beyond the pale.” Israeli journalist Chemi Shalev wrote that Friedman “makes Benjamin Netanyahu seem like a left-wing defeatist” and argued that “from where Friedman stands, most Israelis, never mind most American Jews, are more or less traitors.”

It’s not clear where exactly Friedman fits into Trump’s ambiguous foreign policy. Trump’s choice for Secretary of Defense, James Mattis, has advocated for a two-state solution and in 2013 warned that Israeli risks becoming an “apartheid” state by disenfranchising Arabs. But the incoming administration itself appears to be far more hawkish. Trump transition spokesman Jason Miller confirmed on Friday that Trump remains committed to moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, which Friedman described in his statement as Israel’s “eternal capital.” And while Trump has previously argued that he could act as a neutral arbiter in brokering peace between the Israelis and Palestinians—and suggested on the campaign trail that he might put his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, in charge of such negotiations—moving the U.S. embassy would be a nonstarter.