U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee told the BBC on Sunday that the France- and Saudi-led drive to recognize a Palestinian state at the United Nations later this month has had “disastrous consequences.
“I wish they would’ve thought about the implications,” Huckabee said in the interview, nothing the move would violate the Oslo Accords signed between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization in the 1990s.
“I don’t know why people don’t understand that unilaterally declaring a Palestinian state is a violation of the Oslo Accords that everybody thought would lead to a Palestinian state,” said the diplomat.
Huckabee noted that Jerusalem was considering extending its sovereignty to “more parts of Judea and Samaria” in response.
“So whatever the thought was, however noble it may have seemed, it has had disastrous consequences that have proven to do exactly opposite of what many of the European countries have thought would be a great idea,” he said.
Over the weekend, Huckabee told Israel’s Channel 14 News that the United States “has never asked Israel not to apply sovereignty” in Judea and Samaria.
Huckabee’s statement came on the backdrop of Hebrew-language reports claiming that Washington asked Jerusalem not to advance policies that could harm the Palestinian Authority’s stability.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Thursday, “What you’re seeing with the West Bank and the annexation, that’s not a final thing—that’s something being discussed among some elements of Israeli politics.”
He went on to say that Washington had harsh words for world leaders who have said that they plan to unilaterally recognize a Palestinian state.
“We told all these countries, ‘If you guys do this recognition stuff—it’s all fake, it’s not even real,” Rubio told reporters during a diplomatic visit to Quito, Ecuador. “If you do it, you’re going to create really big problems.”
