Mike Huckabee Torches European Allies for Recognizing Palestine: They ‘Just Ended Negotiations’

Mike Huckabee, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, had strong words for the U.S.’s European allies that have recognized Palestine as a sovereign state.

Huckabee appeared on an episode of Piers Morgan Uncensored that aired on Thursday, and in which he reacted to Morgan’s observation that 160 international states now recognize Palestine.

“We’re disappointed as a United States in our allies that we are great friends with,” Huckabee said, “because, first of all, it’s a violation of the Oslo accords. That’s problematic.”

The Oslo Accords were peace agreements signed in 1993 by Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian President Yasser Arafat in which both factions agreed to recognize one another. Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization and its political governing body, the Palestinian Authority, have lost power over the years to rival militant extremists, Hamas.

“More importantly, it has had the opposite effect of what I think they wanted to see happen. The first thing that happened as Secretary Rubio has repeatedly point out, it just ended negotiations with Hamas. That froze absolutely stone cold,” added Huckabee.

He continued:

The second thing, we’ve been desperately trying to work some resolve to the impasse between a financial crisis between the Palestinian Authority and Israel. There are some issues that are very harmful to the Palestinian Authority. Quite frankly, it’s not good for anyone…but there were some unresolved issues we were making progress on. I’ve been going back and forth between Ramallah and Jerusalem to work on it. When this happened, that ended the discussion and we’re back to zero on that.

And the third thing that happened is it has emboldened Israel to start talking about declaring sovereignty over parts of Judea and Sumaria. So, all of those things, I don’t think, were the intended consequences of the decision by countries like France and the U.K. to unilaterally declare a Palestinian state. But that’s the result of it.

The Palestinian president has said he’s ready to work with the Trump administration on a two-state peace plan.