Mike Huckabee’s Stances on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Mike Huckabee Tours East Jerusalem

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for ambassador to Israel, has consistently opposed the creation of a Palestinian state in territories previously captured by Israel. He has also repeatedly expressed unwavering support for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Huckabee, a former TV host and Baptist preacher, frequently travels to Israel and has even mentioned wanting to purchase a vacation home there. Throughout the years, he has maintained that the West Bank belongs to Israel, recently stating, “the title deed was given by God to Abraham and to his heirs.”

His advocacy for a so-called “one-state solution” contradicts the long-standing official U.S. stance in favor of eventually establishing 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. must stand firmly behind Israel.

Here are some of Huckabee’s past comments regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

He is resolutely against a two-state solution

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

Israel seized the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and east Jerusalem during the 1967 Mideast war. Palestinians seek these territories for a future state, viewing them as parts of a single country currently under military occupation.

The U.S., alongside most of the international community, has advocated for the establishment of a Palestinian state based on the 1967 lines as the foundation of a peace agreement. Even Israel’s hardline prime minister once endorsed a two-state solution while rejecting a return to Israel’s pre-1967 lines. Netanyahu now opposes the creation of a Palestinian state.

Huckabee has never supported any solution that would necessitate the displacement of Israeli settlers.

In a 2015 interview with The Associated Press, Huckabee, who was then running for the GOP presidential nomination, stated that 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 condemned by Democrats, but Huckabee defended it.

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

In a recent interview with a podcaster, Huckabee said he didn’t 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,” referring to one of the early leaders of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

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.”

Hamas-led militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took about 250 people hostage. Israel responded with one of the deadliest and most destructive military campaigns in recent history, killing more than 43,000 people, Palestinian health officials say.