US envoy says he does not think Palestinian state is US policy goal, Bloomberg reports

WASHINGTON: U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee said he did not think that an independent Palestinian state remains a goal of U.S. foreign policy, according to an interview with Bloomberg News released on Tuesday.

“I don’t think so,” Huckabee said when asked if a Palestinian state remains a goal of U.S. policy, Bloomberg reported.

Asked whether Huckabee’s remarks represented a change in U.S. policy, U.S. State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce declined to comment, saying policy-making was a matter for President Donald Trump and the White House.

“I’m not going to characterize the ambassador’s remarks. I’m not going to explain them or really comment on them at all. I think he certainly speaks for himself,” Bruce told a regular press briefing.

The White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Huckabee’s remarks.

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Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, is a staunch pro-Israel conservative picked by Trump to be his envoy to Israel.

“Unless there are some significant things that happen that change the culture, there’s no room for it,” Huckabee was quoted as saying. Those probably won’t happen “in our lifetime,” he told the news agency.

Trump, in his first term, was relatively tepid in his approach to a two-state solution, a longtime pillar of U.S. Middle East policy, and he has given little sign of where he stands on the issue in his second term.

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?” Huckabee said, using the biblical name the Israeli government favors for the West Bank, where some 3 million Palestinians live under occupation.

An evangelical Christian, Huckabee has been a vocal supporter of Israel throughout his political career and a longtime defender of Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank.

Trump has pursued strongly pro-Israel policies as president and his choice of Huckabee as ambassador signaled that they would continue.