(Reuters) -U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee said he did not think that an independent Palestinian state remains a goal of U.S. foreign policy, according to an interview with Bloomberg News released on Tuesday.
“I don’t think so,” Huckabee said when asked if a Palestinian state remains a goal of U.S. policy, Bloomberg reported, Bloomberg reported.
Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, is staunch pro-Israel conservative picked by President Donald Trump to be his envoy to Israel.
“Unless there are some significant things that happen that change the culture, there’s no room for it,” Huckabee was quoted as saying. Those probably won’t happen “in our lifetime,” he told the news agency.
Trump, in his first term, was relatively tepid in his approach to a two-state solution, a longtime pillar of U.S. Middle East policy, and he has given little sign of where he stands on the issue in his second term.
Huckabee suggested a piece of land could be carved out of a Muslim country rather than asking Israel to make room. “Does it have to be in Judea and Samaria?” Huckabee said, using the biblical name the Israeli government favors for the West Bank, where some 3 million Palestinians live under occupation.
The White House and U.S. State Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Huckabee’s remarks.
An evangelical Christian, Huckabee has been a vocal supporter of Israel throughout his political career and a longtime defender of Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank.
Trump has pursued strongly pro-Israel policies as president and his choice of Huckabee as ambassador signaled that they would continue.
(Reporting by Nilutpal Timsina in Bengaluru; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Doina Chiacu)
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