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Huckabee: Trump decision on Judea, Samaria sovereignty on hold

“For the president, getting the hostages home, especially our Americans, is front and center above everything else,” said the American ambassador to Israel.

Mike Huckabee
U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee at the JNS International Policy Summit in Jerusalem, April 28, 2025. Photo by Hillel Maeir.

U.S. President Donald Trump is not expected to announce a decision on recognizing Israeli sovereignty over Judea and Samaria in the coming weeks, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee told JNS in Jerusalem on Monday night.

“Those are important questions,” Huckabee said during a press conference following his keynote address at the JNS International Policy Summit, “but for the president, getting the hostages home, especially our Americans, is front and center above everything else.”

He continued, saying that there is “certainly time for that discussion, but right now, our priority is seeing the hostages safely returned, ensuring the Iranians are no longer aspiring to nuclear weaponry designed to murder and kill. Then we’ll take on the other issues.”

Akiva Van Koningsveld is a news desk editor for JNS.org. Originally from The Hague, he made the big move from the Netherlands to Israel in 2020. Before joining JNS, he worked as a policy officer at the Center for Information and Documentation Israel, a Dutch organization dedicated to fighting antisemitism and spreading awareness about the Arab-Israel conflict. With a passion for storytelling and justice, he studied journalism at the University of Applied Sciences Utrecht and later earned a law degree from Utrecht University, focusing on human rights and civil liability.
Amelie Botbol is a diplomatic correspondent for JNS. Originally from Casablanca, Morocco, she made aliyah in 2014. Her reporting focuses on major international developments and the Israeli political arena, including weekly coverage from the Knesset. She also produced one of the world’s most extensive bodies of reporting on Israel’s hostage crisis following the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led terrorist attacks.
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