Afrasianet - Mahmoud Sultan - The Arabs and the Muslim world have the right to be alarmed and angry by the statements of an American diplomat who holds an official position, with all the significance and symbolism of this "position", which naturally obliges him not to deviate from the official approach of the state.
No observer can find an approach that explains the shocking and crude statements of the US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, a former Baptist pastor, in which he authorized Tel Aviv to control a large area of the Middle East, including the territory of Arab countries friendly or allied with the United States of America.
In a podcast episode released on Friday, February 20, right-wing American journalist Tucker Carlson pressed Huckabee on the meaning of a biblical verse sometimes interpreted as saying that Israel has a right to the land between the Nile River in Egypt and the Euphrates River in Syria, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia, saying without hesitation: "It would be nice if they took it all."
This is not the first time that Huckabee has expressed support for positions that are sharply different from traditional U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East.
Washington has long supported a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, including the establishment of a Palestinian state. President Donald Trump has also stated that he would oppose any Israeli attempt to annex the West Bank, which the Palestinians seek to make the center of their future state, which Israel has occupied for nearly sixty years.
By contrast, Huckabee rejected the idea of a two-state solution, and even rejected the idea of Palestinian identity itself, usually referring to the West Bank as "Judea and Samaria" – the biblical name preferred by Jewish settlers – and refusing to characterize Israel's presence in the region as an occupation.
Surprisingly, the State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Huckabee's remarks, said James Shooter, a reporter for the Financial Times in Jerusalem.
Shortly after Trump announced his choice as ambassador to Israel, Huckabee made it clear that he supported Israel's annexation of the occupied West Bank. "I will not set the policy, I will implement the president's policy," he told Israel Army Radio.
In a vague and deceptive gesture, he said that President Trump had already demonstrated during his first term that no American president was more useful than him in ensuring that Israel's sovereignty was understood.
It is true that the US State Department did not comment on Huckabee's statements at the time in 2024, although they were implicitly referring to some sort of official undeclared "collusion" with Israeli brutality and incursion at the expense of the Palestinian territories.
But Trump's response to his country's ambassador in Tel Aviv came later. In September, Trump said, "I will not allow Israel to annex the West Bank. No, I will not allow it. This will not happen."
Huckabee later retracted his dangerous tongue-in-cheek with Carlson, calling his statement "somewhat exaggerated" and adding that Israel was "not trying to seize" the rest of the land referred to in the biblical verse.
The man speaks as if he is infallible from any form of job fitness if he publicly adopts what contradicts the official American narrative of resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and that his adoption of a biblical interpretation of the boundaries of the imagined Israeli land is among the tasks of his official service
It is unclear whether his retreat came under pressure from the White House or from widespread anger in the Middle East, coinciding with growing fears of war between the United States, Israel, and Iran.
His remarks could also stoke "religious and national sentiments" at a time when the United States is trying to work with countries in the region to broker a lasting peace in the wake of the two-year war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, according to the Arab League statement.
Although such crude and provocative statements were not new, and Israeli leaders have always deliberately waved them at a statement or a hint, in exchange for silence or timid comments, from regional institutions that express the Arab and Muslim worlds, this time they provoked unprecedented official Arab anger, as Arab and Muslim countries issued a joint statement on Saturday evening, February 22, from Doha, characterized by coarse language, and considered Huckabee's statements a blank instrument in support of "expansionist Israel."
CNN analyst Tim Lister said, "Any support, even nominally, for Israeli sovereignty over much of the Middle East is an unprecedented departure from U.S. foreign policy, far beyond what the Israeli far right is publicly demanding."
In this context, the controversy over the annexation of "biblical" land has taken commentators away from other important statements made by Huckabee, the importance and even danger of which comes from an official who holds a high diplomatic position.
The man speaks as if he is infallible from any form of job fitness if he publicly adopts what contradicts the official American narrative of resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and that his adoption of a biblical interpretation of the boundaries of Israel's imagined land is among his official duties.
When Carlson hinted that supporting Israel creates a kind of conflict of interest for a U.S. diplomat, Huckabee looked at his lapel and said, "What flag am I wearing? It's scientific. It's the science I serve."
He was equally clear on financial matters. U.S. military aid to Israel benefits U.S. defense procurement, which means gaining an ally in one of the world's most dangerous regions.
Israel, he said, is the "spearhead." The basic idea remains: that this alliance has a strategic logic that will cost much more to replace than to maintain it.
It remains to be pointed out here that everything that is said about biblical expansion at the expense of Arab lands remains like "empty propaganda", hiding an exhausted army whose prestige has been lost and its ability to terrorize and intimidate others, as well as a fragile, disjointed and divided society, and a state that has been placed on the first stages of "collective flight" by the arrogance of power and its bloody rulers, at the first stage of the "collective flight", in the event of any major threats.
As it stands, with regard to Netanyahu's propaganda rhetoric about his ability to reshape the Middle East, he so far seems to be a mere adventurer unable to emerge with any victory, even a nominal one, from the Gaza Strip, the coastal strip on the Mediterranean Sea, which does not exceed 365 square kilometers.
