Donald Trump announced Tuesday his intention to appoint former Arkansas governor and former pastor Mike Huckabee, close to pro-colonization Israeli circles, to the post of United States ambassador to Israel.
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“He adores Israel and the people of Israel, and reciprocally, the people of Israel adore him. Mike will work tirelessly to return peace to the Middle East!” said the president-elect, who in 2018 decided to move the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, in a statement.
The nomination of Mike Huckabee, 69, requires confirmation by the Senate, where the Republicans will have the majority.
This Baptist pastor turned politician, figure of the conservative Christian right and notorious opponent of LGBT+ rights, has twice been a candidate for the Republican candidacy for the presidential election, notably in 2016 when Donald Trump won.
In 2015, he said he did not see the West Bank “as occupied territory”.
In 2017, in the Israeli settlement of Maale Adumim, he told CNN: “The occupied West Bank does not exist. There is Judea and Samaria,” the biblical name for the region that Israelis use.
“There is no such thing as a colony. There are communities, neighborhoods, cities. Occupation doesn’t exist,” he added.
After the unprecedented attack by the Palestinian movement Hamas in Israel on October 7, 2023, Mike Huckabee went to Kibbutz Kfar Aza, where dozens of people were massacred, to express his support for Israel and the “Jewish people”.
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar sent him his “congratulations”.
“As a long-time friend of Israel and our capital Jerusalem, I hope you will feel at home,” he said in a message on X.
Far-right Israeli Minister Bezalel Smotrich assured him on X that Mr. Huckabee was “a supporter of the settlement process.”
“I have no doubt that with him, we will strengthen Israel’s security and our control over all its spaces,” added the Minister of Finance, also responsible for civil management in the occupied West Bank.
On Monday, Bezalel Smotrich promised the annexation in 2025 of Israeli settlements in this Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967, “the only way” according to him to “eliminate the threat” that the creation of a Palestinian state would represent.
Israel Gantz, who heads the Yesha Council (the main organization representing Israeli settlers), “thanked” President-elect Trump in a statement for his “good choice” regarding Mike Huckabee, an “old friend of the Israeli settlements”.
Donald Trump also announced on Tuesday the appointment of Steven Witkoff, a New York investor specializing in real estate, as special United States envoy for the Middle East.
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