“I am not here to articulate or defend my own views or policies, but to present myself as one who will respect and represent the President whose overwhelming election by the people will hopefully give me the honor of serving as ambassador to the State of Israel,” Huckabee said in his opening statement during a Senate hearing on Tuesday.
Trump nominated Huckabee, a well-known evangelical Christian and unapologetic supporter of Israel, to take on the critical post in Jerusalem days after he won reelection on a campaign promise to end the now 17-month war in Gaza.
The former Arkansas governor acknowledged his past support for Israel’s right to annex the West Bank and incorporate its Palestinian population into Israel but said it would not be his “prerogative” to carry out that policy.
“If confirmed, it will be my responsibility to carry out the president’s priorities, not mine,” Huckabee said in response to Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley's questions.
Huckabee, a one-time presidential hopeful, has also repeatedly backed referring to the West Bank by its biblical name of “Judea and Samaria."
Most notably, Huckabee has long been opposed to the idea of a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinian people. In an interview last year, he went even further, saying that he doesn't even believe in referring to the Arab descendants of people who lived in British-controlled Palestine as “Palestinians.”
The term Palestinian stems from a word that was introduced by a Roman emperor in the 2nd century to refer to the Jews who lived in the land that, according to the Bible, was promised to them by God.
