A Palestinian state in the occupied West Bank is no longer a US policy goal, but Israel’s “Muslim neighbours” could give up their land to create one, US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee told Bloomberg news on Tuesday.
“Unless there are some significant things that happen that change the culture, there’s no room for it,” Huckabee, an appointee of US President Donald Trump and longtime advocate of settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank said when asked about a Palestinian state.
He added those steps probably won’t occur “in our lifetime,” he added.
Pressed on the topic, Huckabee repeated an explosive claim floated by some Israeli officials, that neighbouring Muslim countries could give their land to the Palestinians to create a state.
“Where is it gonna be? Does it have to be in Judea and Samaria?” Huckabee asked. “Does it need to be somewhere different?
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Huckabee did not rule out taking land from Saudi Arabia to create a Palestinian state, saying “every option should be on the table,” when pressed.
“Muslim controlled countries have six hundred and forty-four times the amount of land Israel does. 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 [muslim countries] have a lot of room that they could say ‘we’ll carve out something’.”
Huckabee’s comments are likely to irk Egypt and Jordan. Their leaders fear that Israel wants to forcibly displace Palestinians from Gaza and the occupied West Bank onto their land.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated in May that carrying out a plan US President Donald Trump introduced earlier this year to forcibly displace Palestinians from Gaza and turn it into a “Middle East Riviera” was now a condition for ending Israel’s war on Gaza.
Displacing Palestinians
Huckabee’s refusal to rule out carving out a Palestinians state in Saudi Arabia is likely to inflame tensions.
Netanyahu suggested in February that Palestinians should establish a state in Saudi Arabia, rather than in their homeland, in his latest dismissal of Palestinians’ right to self-determination. His comments drew a sharp rebuke from Riyadh.
In his first term, Trump floated a Middle East peace plan dubbed the Deal of the century that called for a de facto rump Palestinian state without full sovereignty. But at the very least, that plan focused on fashioning a pseudo-state in the occupied West Bank.
Huckabee’s comments are more hardline because he refuses to rule out displacing Palestinians in full.
Since the 1950’s, successive American administration have stated that their ultimate goal to end the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is a two-state solution. Many experts and diplomats have earmarked occupied East Jerusalem, the occupied West Bank and Gaza, which Israel seized from Egypt and Jordan in the 1967 war as the heartland of a future Palestinian state.
Huckabee is a prominent leader in the pro-Israel evangelical Christian movement, who has repeatedly denied the Palestinian national identity.
Huckabee advocated for the forcible displacement of Palestinians during the early days of Israel’s war on Gaza.
“If the so-called Palestinians are so loved by the Muslim nations of the world, why wont any of those nations at least offer to give temporary refuge to their brothers and sisters in Gaza,” he said in October 2023.
He has been an outspoken advocate for Israel’s annexation of the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. “I think Israel has title deed to Judea and Samaria,” he told Politico in 2017, using the Hebrew language terms for the occupied West Bank.
“There are certain words I refuse to use. There is no such thing as a West Bank. It’s Judea and Samaria. There’s no such thing as a settlement. They’re communities, they’re neighborhoods, they’re cities. There’s no such thing as an occupation,” he said at the time.
