Trump picks Mike Huckabee for ambassador to Israel. Here are 4 things to know

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, President-elect Donald Trump’s decide to be ambassador to Israel, has lengthy rejected a Palestinian state in territory beforehand seized by Israel and has repeatedly signaled his staunch help for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Huckabee, a former TV host and Baptist preacher, incessantly visits Israel and as soon as stated he wished to purchase a vacation dwelling there. He has maintained all through the years that the West Financial institution belongs to Israel, and lately stated “the title deed was given by God to Abraham and to his heirs.”

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His argument for a so-called “one-state answer” contradicts longstanding official U.S. help for the eventual institution of a Palestinian state.

He has described the Oct. 7 assault by Hamas as “horrific” and ” past something I’ve ever witnessed in my lifetime” and argued that the U.S. wants to face firmly behind Israel.

Listed here are some issues Huckabee has stated through the years concerning the Israeli-Palestinian battle.

He’s decisively in opposition to a two-state answer

Huckabee has by no means supported a two-state compromise even when Netanyahu endorsed the concept in 2009.

Israel captured the West Financial institution, the Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem within the 1967 Mideast warfare. Palestinians need these territories for a future state and think about them as components of a single nation now beneath navy occupation.

The U.S., together with a lot of the worldwide group, has supported the institution of a Palestinian state based mostly on the 1967 strains because the cornerstone of a peace settlement. Even Israel’s hardline prime minister as soon as endorsed a two-state answer whereas rejecting a return to Israel’s pre-1967 strains. Netanyahu now rejects the creation of a Palestinian state.

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Huckabee has by no means supported any answer that may require Israeli settlers to be uprooted.

In an interview with The Related Press in 2015, Huckabee, then working for the GOP presidential nomination, stated recognizing the West Financial institution as Israeli can be the “formal place” of his administration. He criticized Israel’s 2005 withdrawal from Gaza and described settlers evacuated by Israeli forces as having been “marched at gunpoint.”

“I really feel that we’ve got a accountability to respect that that is land that has traditionally belonged to the Jews,” he stated.

He as soon as in contrast the Iran nuclear deal to the Holocaust

In 2015, Huckabee likened the Iran nuclear deal to marching Israelis “to the door of the oven,” a reference to the crematorium in a Nazi focus camp through the Holocaust.

Huckabee was criticizing then-President Barack Obama for his position within the settlement the U.S. and different world powers reached with Tehran. Republicans again then have been united of their opposition to the deal, arguing it didn’t tackle Iran’s help for terrorism. Trump throughout his first administration withdrew from the deal, wherein Iran agreed to restrict its nuclear program in trade for sanctions aid.

The remark was denounced by Democrats, however Huckabee stood by it.

He doesn’t settle for Palestinians as a time period and criticizes ‘radical Muslims’

In a latest interview with a podcaster, Huckabee stated he didn’t imagine in referring to the Arab descendants of people that lived in British-controlled Palestine as “Palestinians.”

“There actually isn’t such a factor,” he stated earlier this yr on “Assume Twice” with Jonathan Tobin. “It’s a time period that was co-opted by Yasser Arafat in 1962,” referring to one of many early leaders of the Palestine Liberation Group.

Throughout the identical podcast, Huckabee described himself as an “unapologetic, unreformed Zionist.”

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In defending Israel, Huckabee stated he wished folks understood that “that is a rare oasis in a land of totalitarianism surrounded by tyranny.”

The previous governor additionally stated many “radical Muslims wish to take us again to the seventh century.”

“I don’t wish to return there,” he stated. “I like modernity.”

He expresses outrage over Oct. 7 assault by Hamas

Huckabee has described the assault on Oct. 7, 2023, as “horrific” and “past something I’ve ever witnessed in my lifetime.” He was outraged by how Hamas unfold photos of the killings on social media.

“As horrible because the Nazis have been, they weren’t posting their atrocities on social media and attempting to trumpet what they have been doing to the world,” he stated in an look with the Worldwide Fellowship of Christians and Jews. “Which is what makes this horrendous factor Hamas has finished a lot, to me, worse, as a result of they need everybody to see what they’ve finished.”

Hamas-led militants killed some 1,200 folks, largely civilians, and took about 250 folks hostage. Israel responded with one of many deadliest and most harmful navy campaigns in latest historical past, killing greater than 43,000 folks, Palestinian well being officers say.