The US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee has suggested “Muslim countries” should give up some of their land to create a future Palestinian state on Tuesday. Huckabee said “Muslim countries have 644 times the amount of land that are controlled by Israel”.
“So maybe, if there is such a desire for the Palestinian state, there would be someone who would say, we’d like to host it,” he said in an interview with BBC.
The ambassador also called a two-state solution “an aspirational goal”. The two-state solution is a proposed formula for peace between Israel and the Palestinians that has generally received international backing, including from multiple US administrations. It envisages an independent Palestinian state in the occupied West Bank and in Gaza, with East Jerusalem as its capital. It would exist alongside Israel.
Israel rejects a two-state solution. It says any final settlement must be the result of negotiations with the Palestinians, and statehood should not be a precondition.
State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce later said the ambassador “speaks for himself”, and it is the president who is responsible for US policy in the Middle East. Later this month at the United Nations in New York, French and Saudi diplomats will host a conference aimed at laying out a roadmap for an eventual Palestinian state.
Although Huckabee did not say where any future Palestinian state could be located specifically or whether the US would support such an effort, he called the conference “ill-timed and inappropriate”. Huckabee has previously been a strong supporter of the idea of a “greater Israel”, seeking permanent Israeli control of the Occupied Palestinian Territories; his language echoes positions frequently taken by ultranationalist groups in Israel, some of whom argue for the expulsion of Palestinians.
If such a policy was enacted, rights groups and European governments say it would be a clear violation of international law. Since October 2023, at least 54,927 Palestinians have been killed, according to the Gaza’s ministry of health. The UN estimates that more than a quarter of them are children.