US ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee suggested “Muslim countries” should give up some of their land to create a future Palestinian state.Speaking to the BBC, Huckabee said Muslim countries have 644 times more land than 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.Huckabee further called the idea of a two-state solution, where Israel and a future Palestinian state would exist side by side, “an aspirational goal.” This idea is widely supported internationally, including by past US governments.The plan imagines a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, with East Jerusalem as its capital.But in a different interview with Bloomberg, Huckabee said the US was no longer working toward creating an independent Palestinian state.Afterward, state department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce said that Huckabee was speaking for himself, and that the president sets US policy in the Middle East.When asked if the US now opposes a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Huckabee said,: “I wouldn’t say there can never be, what I would say is that a culture would have to change.”“Right now the culture is that it’s OK to target Jews and kill them and you’re rewarded for it. That has to change.”Israel itself rejects the two-state solution. It says any final agreement must come through talks with Palestinians, and that statehood cannot be a precondition.Huckabee has long supported the idea of a “greater Israel,” meaning permanent Israeli control of the occupied Palestinian territories. He uses the biblical term “Judea and Samaria” to refer to the West Bank.The ambassador also strongly criticised US allies, including the UK and Australia, for placing sanctions on two far-right Israeli ministers. The sanctions were issued over the ministers’ “repeated incitements of violence against Palestinian communities” in the occupied West Bank.He said, “I have not yet heard a good reason for why these two elected ministers have been sanctioned by countries that ought to respect the country’s sovereignty and recognise that they have not conducted any criminal activity.”The war in Gaza started in October 2023, after Hamas attacked Israel, killing around 1,200 people and taking about 251 hostages. There are still 56 hostages being held in Gaza, and at least 20 are believed to be alive.Since the war began, at least 54,927 Palestinians have been killed, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry. The UN says more than a quarter of those killed were children.
