US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee appeared to signal that Washington has not taken a stance against Israel’s decision to apply sovereignty to the West Bank, according to a Channel 14 reporter on Friday.
Tamir Morag, a reporter for Channel 14, posted a quote from Huckabee Friday saying that the US has not come out against applying sovereignty.
“The US has never asked Israel to not apply sovereignty,” Huckabee said, according to the post on X. “I have repeatedly stated that the US respects Israel as a sovereign nation and will not tell Israel what to do. This is also what Secretary Rubio has said as recently as this week.”
Huckabee confirmed the quote, reposting it and writing, “I appreciate Channel 14 in Israel clarifying their story. Responsible journalism.”
The Baptist minister and former Arkansas governor has long been a prominent champion of Israel and the policies of its hardline government, defending continued settlement construction as a response to the decisions by Western countries to announce plans to recognize a Palestinian state.
Huckabee told Al Arabiya in August that US President Donald Trump’s administration hasn’t taken a position on Israel’s controversial E1 settlement project, preventing Palestinian contiguity in the West Bank, but did reverse longstanding US policy in his first term by declaring that Israeli settlements in the West Bank are not a violation of international law.
Discussions on extending sovereignty to parts of the territory, a step tantamount to annexation, have been on the Israeli government’s agenda on an increasingly open basis recently.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly convened top ministers to talk about applying sovereignty on Thursday, a day after Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich unveiled a plan to annex 82% of the West Bank.
Huckabee’s statement came five years after Jared Kushner, US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and then-senior adviser, said that American officials “do not plan to give our consent for some time,” to Israeli annexation of West Bank territory, following the announcement of a normalization deal between Israel and the United Arab Emirates.
Kushner said at the time, in August 2020, that “right now the focus has to be on getting this new peace agreement implemented.”
That statement came after Kushner had similarly ruled out US approval of annexation ahead of an upcoming Israeli election, and that ‘peace agreement’ turned into the Abraham Accords, a normalization deal between Israel and four Arab countries.
A UAE envoy told The Times of Israel Wednesday that if Israel moves forward with annexation, it would constitute a “red line” that would “end regional integration.”
On Tuesday it was reported that Huckabee warned Israeli officials that the Trump administration was very concerned that the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority was nearing collapse. Smotrich has ordered the withholding of funds that are usually transferred to the PA.
“If the Palestinian economy collapses, that is nobody’s victory,” Huckabee told Channel 12, adding that “desperate people do desperate things.”
Jacob Magid and Lazar Berman contributed to this report.