US envoy: Palestinian state no longer policy goal
WASHINGTON: Washington's ambassador to Israel said he did not think an independent Palestinian state remains a US foreign policy goal, prompting the State Department to say he spoke for himself while the White House referred to past comments from President Donald Trump expressing doubts about a two-state solution.
"I don't think so," US Ambassador Mike Huckabee said in an interview with Bloomberg News published on Tuesday, when asked if a Palestinian state remains a goal of US policy.
Asked about Huckabee's comments, the White House referred to remarks earlier this year by Trump when he proposed a US takeover of Gaza, which was condemned globally by rights groups, Arab states, Palestinians and the UN as a proposal of "ethnic cleansing."
The White House also referred to remarks by Trump from last year
before he won the 2024 election when he said: "I'm not sure a two-state solution anymore is going to work."
Asked whether Huckabee's remarks represented a change in US policy, State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce declined to comment on Tuesday, saying policy-making was a matter for Trump and the White House.
"I'm not going to explain them or really comment on them at all. I think he certainly speaks for himself," Bruce told reporters.
Huckabee, an evangelical Christian, is a staunch pro-Israel conservative.
"Unless there are some significant things that happen that change the culture, there's no room for it," Huckabee was quoted as saying by Bloomberg. Those probably won't happen "in our lifetime," he said.
Trump, in his first term, was relatively tepid in his approach to a two-state solution, a longtime pillar of US Middle East policy. Trump 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 favours for the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where some 3 million Palestinians live.
Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor, has been a vocal supporter of Israel throughout his political career and a longtime defender of Jewish settlements in the West Bank.
Trump has pursued strongly pro-Israel policies as president and his choice of Huckabee as ambassador signaled that they would continue.
The United States has for decades backed a two-state solution between the Israelis and the Palestinians that would create a state for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza alongside Israel.
The latest bloodshed in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict was triggered in October 2023, when Palestinian Hamas fighters attacked Israel, killing 1,200 and taking about 250 hostages, according to Israeli allies.
US ally Israel's subsequent military assault on Gaza has killed nearly 55,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza's health ministry, while internally displacing nearly Gaza's entire population and causing a hunger crisis. The assault has also triggered accusations of genocide at the International Court of Justice and of war crimes at the International Criminal Court. Israel denies the accusations.--REUTERS
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