“The United States has never asked Israel not to apply sovereignty” in Judea and Samaria, Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee told broadcaster Channel 14 on Friday.
Huckabee’s statement came on the backdrop of Hebrew-language reports claiming that Washington asked Jerusalem not to advance policies that could cause harm the stability of the Palestinian Authority.
“I have repeatedly said that the United States respects Israel as a sovereign state and will not tell Israel what to do. That’s also what Secretary of State Rubio said just last week,” Channel 14 quoted the American envoy as saying in response to these reports.
On Thursday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “abruptly” canceled a Cabinet discussion on a plan to annex part of Judea and Samaria, Channel 14 reported.
The report provided several reasons for the cancelation, including American pressure not to press forward with this agenda.
An unnamed Israeli official reportedly said that the meeting was only postposed due to schedule congestion.
The Washington Post reported on Saturday that an “unusual message” delivered by the United Arab Emirates had prompted Netanyahu and several senior ministers to remove the annexation plan from the Cabinet’s agenda.
“Annexation would be a red line for my government, and that means there can be no lasting peace. It would foreclose the idea of regional integration and be the death knell of the two-state solution,” Special Envoy of the Emirati Foreign Ministry Lana Nusseibeh told Hebrew and international media on Tuesday.
It was reportedly the first time an Emirati official has publicly put under question the Abraham Accords, which the UAE and Bahrain were the first Arab countries to sign onto on Sept. 15, 2020.
The public message followed several warnings in diplomatic back-channels, which were met with silence by the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office, according to the Post.
Asked by reporters on Thursday in Ecuador to comment on this development, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, “What you’re seeing with [Judea and Samaria] and the annexation, that’s not a final thing—that’s something being discussed among some elements of Israeli politics. I’m not going to opine on that today.”
He went on to say that Washington had harsh words for world leaders, who have said that they plan to recognize an independent 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 the diplomatic visit to Quito, Ecuador. “If you do it, you’re going to create really big problems.”
Rubio is expected to visit Israel on Sept. 14.
