Thursday, November 14

Israel applauds nomination of Mike Huckabee as US ambassador

Deutsche Welle avatar

By Deutsche Welle

Nov 13, 2024, 08:48 AM EST

The Israeli Foreign Minister, Guideon Saar expressed his satisfaction with the nomination of former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabeewho does not recognize the existence of illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank, as the new US ambassador to Israel, by US president-elect Donald Trump.

“I look forward to working with you to strengthen the bond between our peoples“Saar wrote on his X account, along with a photo in which they both appear shaking hands. Saar congratulated Huckabee on his nomination and called him a “long-time friend of Israel” and Jerusalem.

Another of the ministers who showed his joy at Huckabee’s election was the Minister of National Security, the ultranationalist and Jewish supremacist, Itamar Ben Gvir, who simply wrote Huckabee’s name followed by a United States flag, a heart and an Israeli flag.

Trump assured in a statement that Huckabee “will work tirelessly to achieve peace in the Middle East.” “He loves Israel and the people of Israel and, in the same way, the people of Israel love him,” he added.

In January 2017, Huckabee traveled to the occupied West Bank to inaugurate expansion work on the Jewish colony of Maale Adumim.where he showed rejection of the existence of the West Bank as Palestinian territory.

“There are certain words I refuse to use. There is nothing that is the West Bank, it is Judea and Samaria (biblical names for the West Bank),” said the one who was a candidate in 2008 and 2016 for the Republican nomination for the presidential elections. During this visit, he also assured, referring to the colonies, contrary to international law, that “there is no such thing as settlements, they are communities, neighborhoods, cities. There is nothing that is the occupation (…) the Jews are residents, the owners.”

During his first term (2017-2021), Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and ordered the construction of a new embassy, ​​he also recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights and promoted agreements to normalize relations between Israel and several countries. Arabs.

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