President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for U.S. ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, has hinted that annexation of the West Bank, which he refers to as “Judea and Samaria,” could be a possibility during Trump’s upcoming term. In an interview with Army Radio, Huckabee underscored his support for Israel’s sovereignty over the territory, rejecting the term “West Bank” in favor of its Biblical name.

“There is no such thing as the West Bank — it’s Judea and Samaria,” Huckabee stated. “I have been a frequent visitor to Judea and Samaria and believe it is part of sovereign Israel,” he added, reiterating his long-standing belief that the area belongs to Israel.

When pressed on whether annexation could take place under Trump’s leadership, Huckabee responded, “Well, of course.” He stressed, however, that he is not the one to set policy: “I won’t make the policy; I will carry out the policy of the president.” Huckabee pointed to Trump’s record from his first term as evidence of his strong commitment to Israel, highlighting the U.S. Embassy move to Jerusalem, recognition of the Golan Heights, and acknowledgment of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. “There’s never been an American president more supportive of Israel’s sovereignty,” he remarked.

Huckabee has long rejected a Palestinian state in territory previously seized by Israel and has repeatedly signaled his staunch support for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Huckabee, a former TV host and Baptist preacher, frequently visits Israel and once said he wanted to buy a holiday home there. He has maintained throughout the years that the West Bank belongs to Israel, and recently said “the title deed was given by God to Abraham and to his heirs.”

His argument for a so-called “one-state solution” contradicts longstanding official U.S. support for the eventual establishment of a Palestinian state.

He has described the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas as “horrific” and ” beyond anything I’ve ever witnessed in my lifetime” and argued that the U.S. needs to stand firmly behind Israel.

Here are some things Huckabee has said over the years about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

He is decisively against a two-state solution

Huckabee has never supported a two-state compromise even when Netanyahu endorsed the idea in 2009.

Israel captured the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem in the 1967 Mideast war. Palestinians want those territories for a future state and view them as parts of a single country now under military occupation.

The U.S., along with most of the international community, has supported the establishment of a Palestinian state based on the 1967 lines as the cornerstone of a peace agreement. Even Netanyahu once endorsed a two-state solution while rejecting a return to Israel’s pre-1967 lines. Netanyahu now rejects the creation of a Palestinian state.

Huckabee has never supported any solution that would require Israeli yishuvim to be uprooted.

In an interview with The Associated Press in 2015, Huckabee, then running for the GOP presidential nomination, said recognizing the West Bank as Israeli would be the “formal position” 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 feel that we have a responsibility to respect that this is land that has historically belonged to the Jews,” he said.

He once compared 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 concentration camp during the Holocaust.

Huckabee was criticizing then-President Barack Obama for his role in the agreement the U.S. and other world powers reached with Tehran. Republicans back then were united in their opposition to the deal, arguing it didn’t address Iran’s support for terrorism. Trump during his first administration withdrew from the deal, in which Iran agreed to limit its nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief.

The comment was denounced by Democrats, but Huckabee stood by it.

He doesn’t accept Palestinians as a term and criticizes ‘radical Muslims’

In a recent interview with a podcaster, Huckabee said he did not believe in referring to the Arab descendants of people who lived in British-controlled Palestine as “Palestinians.”

“There really isn’t such a thing,” he said earlier this year on “Think Twice” with Jonathan Tobin. “It’s a term that was co-opted by Yasser Arafat in 1962.”

During the same podcast, Huckabee described himself as an “unapologetic, unreformed Zionist.”

In defending Israel, Huckabee said he wished people understood that “this is an extraordinary oasis in a land of totalitarianism surrounded by tyranny.”

The former governor also said many “radical Muslims want to take us back to the seventh century.”

“I don’t want to go back there,” he said. “I like modernity.”

He expresses outrage over Oct. 7 attack by Hamas

Huckabee has described the attack on Oct. 7, 2023, as “horrific” and “beyond anything I’ve ever witnessed in my lifetime.” He was outraged by how Hamas spread images of the killings on social media.

“As horrible as the Nazis were, they weren’t posting their atrocities on social media and trying to trumpet what they were doing to the world,” he said in an appearance with the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews. “Which is what makes this horrendous thing Hamas has done so much, to me, worse, because they want everyone to see what they’ve done.”

(YWN/AP)