“Huckabee understands that Judea and Samaria are historically Jewish lands, and that Israel has every right to apply its sovereignty over them. He will be a great ambassador and a steadfast ally for Israel in Washington.”
Ben-Ami of J Street said that the change in personnel could spell a shift in policy — and that the appointment of an ambassador who is not Jewish could mean that evangelicals will have more sway in the debate over the West Bank.
“The fact that Trump is appointing a non-Jew as ambassador is a clear sign that he’s not going to be talking to the Jewish community,” Ben-Ami said. “He’s going to be listening to the evangelical community.”
Huckabee’s nomination is still subject to Senate confirmation, but his supporters are optimistic that he will soon be in place. The former Arkansas governor is a friend and ally of Trump’s, having endorsed him in the 2016 Republican primary and spoken at the Republican National Convention that year.
“Governor Huckabee has a long and distinguished record of supporting Israel and the Jewish people, and we are confident that he will be confirmed with bipartisan support,” said Parker of the CUFI Action Fund.
Huckabee has already gotten to work on the confirmation process, meeting with senators on both sides of the aisle to make his case for the job.
“He’s a man of faith, and he’s a man of integrity,” said Sen. Chris Coons, a Delaware Democrat who met with Huckabee this week. “We had a good conversation about his background, his views on Israel and the Middle East, and his vision for the role of ambassador. I look forward to supporting his nomination.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican and vocal supporter of Israel, said Huckabee’s views on the region “are well known and reflect the consensus in the Senate.”
With the Senate in Republican hands, Huckabee’s confirmation is expected to sail through.
The Huckabees are already making plans to move to the ambassador’s residence in Herzliya, a suburb of Tel Aviv. They are expected to arrive in Israel in the coming weeks.
“We are thrilled at the prospect of representing the United States in the Holy Land,” Huckabee said in a statement. “Israel is America’s greatest friend and ally, and I look forward to working with the Israeli government to strengthen our relationship and advance our shared interests.”
The Huckabees are also looking forward to exploring the country, including Judea and Samaria, where they have friends and have visited many times.
There’s no such thing as a settlement. They’re communities, they’re neighborhoods, they’re cities. There’s no such thing as an occupation’,” ZOA’s president, Mort Klein, said in a statement.
Palestinians and other opponents of annexation, including the Israeli and pro-Israel left, say it would be illegal under international law; would eliminate the possibility for a two-state solution, and, if Palestinians living there were not granted equal rights, would create a de facto apartheid state.
But critics of Trump worry that the appointment is a sign that he will favor evangelical perspectives on Israel. In 2021, Trump mused in a speech that “the evangelical Christians love Israel more than the Jews in this country.”
Huckabee “is very strong with the evangelical crowd, and a whole lot of the support for Israel in the Congress is because of the evangelical crowd,” Rep. Steve Cohen, a Jewish Democrat from Tennessee, said in an interview.
A staffer for a top Democrat in Congress, speaking anonymously to be frank, called Huckabee a “Christian Nationalist and fake-sleeping-pill salesman” and said it was “no surprise” that Trump named him.
“Over the last several years we’ve watched Republicans dehumanize the Palestinian people and do everything in their power to move away from a two-state solution,” the staffer said. “Huckabee is the perfect person to help Bibi Netanyahu cling to power and help Israel’s right-wing coalition turn Israel into a true apartheid state, something it is falsely accused of today.”
Ben-Ami said the coupling of Israeli far-right annexationists with evangelicals who hinge their politics on biblical prophecy is laden with risk.
“It’s a signal that the alliance between the Messianic settler movement and the evangelical Christian Zionist movement is what’s going to be driving American policy,” he said. “And that is very scary for those of us who really care about Israel being Jewish and democratic.”
But ultimately, Koplow said, Trump remains unknowable.
“Whatever laws of politics apply to everybody else,” he said, “they don’t really apply to Trump.”
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