US ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee uses Israeli terminology for the occupied West Bank and says the US government has no appetite for a Palestinian state. EPA
US ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee uses Israeli terminology for the occupied West Bank and says the US government has no appetite for a Palestinian state. EPA
US ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee uses Israeli terminology for the occupied West Bank and says the US government has no appetite for a Palestinian state. EPA
US ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee uses Israeli terminology for the occupied West Bank and says the US government has no appetite for a Palestinian state. EPA

US ambassador to Israel does not think Palestinian state is Washington goal


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An independent Palestinian state no longer appears to be a goal of US foreign policy, Mike Huckabee, the US ambassador to Israel, has said.

In an interview with Bloomberg that was published on Tuesday, Mr Huckabee also said that if a Palestinian state were to be formed, it would not be in the West Bank.

“Unless there are some significant things that happen that change the culture, there’s no room for it,” Mr Huckabee said, adding that those changes probably will not happen “in our lifetime”.

“I don't think so,” he said when asked if a Palestinian state remains a goal of US policy.

Regarding a hypothetical location for any eventual state, Mr Huckabee suggested a piece of land could be carved out of a Muslim country rather than asking Israel to make room.

“Does it have to be in Judea and Samaria?” said Mr Huckabee, 69, using the biblical name the Israeli government favours for the West Bank, where about three million Palestinians live under occupation.

Palestinians say that Israel has made a formation of a state nearly impossible by building more and bigger Jewish settlements in the West Bank and undermining Palestinian authorities, while doing little to stop settler violence against Palestinians.

European and Arab countries have been working to promote the creation of a Palestinian state led by the Palestinian Authority, which controls parts of the West Bank, as part of a process to end the 20-month war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

A conference in New York on June 17, sponsored by France and Saudi Arabia, will be focused on such a state with the idea that the Palestinian Authority lead a multilateral effort to drive Hamas from Gaza and rebuild the coastal strip.

Asked how the war could be brought to a conclusion, Mr Huckabee placed the blame for it on Hamas, designated a terrorist organisation by the US and European Union, saying the Iran-backed group must free its remaining hostages for the conflict to end.

Concern is building among international governments that Gaza’s two million inhabitants are facing starvation after Israel barred aid for several weeks from early in March to put pressure on Hamas.

A US-Israeli group, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, has been working to deliver supplies in recent days but its work has been marred by violence.

Conflict, drought, famine

Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.

Band Aid

Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.

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