Mike Huckabee, U.S. ambassador to Israel, told Bloomberg News in an interview published June 10 that support for an independent Palestinian state is no longer official U.S. policy. Asked whether Washington backed the two-state solution, he said: “I don’t think so. Unless there are some significant things that happen that change the culture, there’s no room for it.”
Support for a two-state solution has been official U.S. policy since the 1950s. In apparent confirmation of the change in policy, Haaretz reported this afternoon that the U.S. government is actively discouraging governments from attending next week’s conference sponsored by France and Saudi Arabia at the United Nations which will be discussing a possible two-state solution between Israel and Palestine. A U.S. cable sent to foreign governments warns that any nation that engages in “anti-Israeli” activity following the conference will be viewed as acting against U.S. foreign policy interests and may suffer diplomatic consequences.
The cable reads: “We are urging governments not to participate in the conference, which we view as counterproductive to ongoing, lifesaving efforts to end the war in Gaza and free hostages. The United States opposes any steps that would unilaterally recognise a conjectural Palestinian state, which adds significant legal and political obstacles to the eventual resolution of the conflict and could coerce Israel during a war, thereby supporting its enemies.”
After he was nominated as Washington’s ambassador Huckabee, an ardent Christian Zionist, told Israeli Army Radio that he believed the annexation of “Judea and Samaria”—the Biblical term Israel uses to identify the West Bank—was a possibility. He said that 3 million Palestinians currently living under occupation in the West Bank could be accommodated in land carved out of another Muslim country in the Middle East, rather than expecting Israel to surrender territory. He posed: “Does it have to be in Judea and Samaria?” He has previously been quoted saying “There’s really no such thing as a Palestinian.”
Questioned (every which way) at yesterday’s State Department briefing on whether the U.S. still supported the two-state solution, spokeswoman Tammy Bruce refused to answer either way, telling reporters to ask that question at the White House.
As for the idea that “Muslim neighbors” could give up land to create a new state, Huckabee was quite open about taking land from Saudi Arabia to create a Palestinian state. “Muslim-controlled countries have 644 times the amount of land Israel does,” he said. “When people say Israel needs to give up something, you kind of scratch your head and say let me see if I get this right. Why should these people [Israelis] give way when these people [Muslims] have a lot of room that they could say ‘we’ll carve out something.’”
In the same Bloomberg interview, Huckabee confirmed reports that he met with leaders of Israel’s religious parties, known collectively as the Haredim, and told them that if Netanyahu’s government fell, it would be viewed poorly in the U.S. “Americans won’t understand a collapse of a government,” Huckabee said. “That, to Americans, signals instability.”
