Huckabee’s Israel land remarks condemned as ‘dangerous and inflammatory’

Governments from across the Islamic world have condemned remarks by the US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, suggesting it would “be fine” for Israel to claim a broad swath of the Middle East.Huckabee, an evangelical Christian pastor and former Arkansas governor, has long been an outspoken supporter of Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territories. In an interview with the conservative US commentator Tucker Carlson published on Friday, the ambassador pointed to verses in the Bible that some Jews and evangelical Christians interpret as signifying the divine right of Jews to claim the land from the Nile to the Euphrates.“It would be fine if they took it all. But I don’t think that’s what we’re talking about here today,” Huckabee said, suggesting that it was Israeli restraint that prevented the Jewish state from exercising its biblical claim.“We’re talking about this land that the state of Israel now lives in and wants to have peace in,” the ambassador said. “They’re not trying to take over Jordan, they’re not trying to take over Syria, they’re not trying to take over Iraq or anywhere else. They want to protect their people.”Huckabee later admitted his remark had been “somewhat of a hyperbolic statement”. But the suggestion that Jews had a divine right to a large part of the Middle East drew a furious response from Muslim governments around the world.A joint statement signed by a list of countries including Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey, Indonesia and Pakistan, said the ambassador’s comments were “dangerous and inflammatory remarks, which constitute a flagrant violation of the principles of international law and the Charter of the United Nations, and pose a grave threat to the security and stability of the region.”The US embassy in Israel insisted the comments had been taken out of context by the states making the complaint.“US policy has not changed,” the embassy said in a statement. “The narrative was based on an edited portion of a response. If one listens to the full context Ambassador Huckabee clearly says that Israel has no desire to change their current boundaries. Any characterization otherwise is a misrepresentation of the full and unedited response.”In other comments in what appeared to be an unedited video of the interview with Huckabee that Carlson published online, the ambassador appeared to claim that the roughly 60% of the West Bank under direct Israeli control (known as Area C) was an integral part of Israel, in apparent contradiction to Washington’s official position opposing annexation of any or all of the occupied territories.“Area C is Israel,” Huckabee said.The ambassador also gave an expansive interpretation of the biblical areas of Judea and Samaria, ancient geographical terms that Israel uses to refer to the West Bank. Huckabee seemed to go even further.“Well, you basically take the Jordan River, and it’s west of the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea to the Lebanon border,” Huckabee said, again suggesting that Israel had been generous in ceding territory. “Israel did have control of the Sinai. They gave that to Egypt. They had control of it. They gave it away in 1979 in the peace agreement.“Israel has shrunk the land. They have made that decision,” he said. “That’s why they gave away Gaza. They’ve given away a lot of things.”The often tense and combative interview illustrated a rift within the US right over how far the US should go in its support for Israel. Carlson challenged Huckabee repeatedly on whether his claim of the biblical rights of all Jews to settle in the territory between the sea and the River Jordan was defined ethnically or religiously. Huckabee appeared to argue that it was both, meaning that someone who was born Jewish but converted out of the faith held the right to settle there, as well as someone who converted to Judaism.