US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee has reportedly been meeting with ultra-Orthodox coalition members, as part of efforts to prevent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government from collapsing. Citing diplomatic and political sources, Channel 13 news reported Monday, June 9, that Huckabee told senior Haredi politicians that “early elections would be a mistake.”
Palestinians walk next to a sign with portraits of U.S. President Donald Trump and US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee in Jerusalem, May 7, 2025. (Photo: Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
One of the meetings was held Thursday with Minister Meir Porush of the United Torah Judaism party. According to the network, Huckabee stressed to Porush “not to break up the government.” Huckabee also met with Rabbi Moshe Hillel Hirsch, with Channel 13 reporting he told the leading ultra-Orthodox rabbi that it would be difficult for the US to back Israel if elections are held now.
Channel 12 news separately reported Monday that like Huckabee, Netanyahu has linked the current “opportunities and challenges” in Israel’s security situation with the intense political turmoil he is facing during meeting in recent days Haredi lawmakers. Netanyahu’s ruling coalition entered a crisis last week when United Torah Judaism and fellow Haredi party Shas announced they would leave the coalition and vote to dissolve the Knesset if the government does not pass a bill exempting yeshiva students from military service. According to Zo Haderekh weekly, “There is no doubt that Ambassador Huckabee is interfering in Israel’s internal politics and trying to help Netanyahu. Under the far-right government, Israel has become a protectorate of the US imperialism.”
On Tuesday, Huckabee told Bloomberg newsthat a Palestinian state in the occupied territories, “is no longer a US policy goal,” but Israeli “Muslim neighbors” could give up their land to create one. “Unless there are some significant things that happen that change the culture, there’s no room for it,” Huckabee, an appointee of US President Donald Trump and longtime advocate of Israeli occupation and settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank, agreed when asked about a Palestinian state. He added those steps probably won’t occur “in our lifetime”.
“Where is it going to be? Does it have to be in Judea and Samaria?” Huckabee asked. “Does it need to be somewhere different?” Huckabee did not rule out taking land from Saudi Arabia to create a Palestinian state, saying “every option should be on the table” when pressed.”
According to the Ambassador, a US prominent leader in the pro-Israel evangelical Christian movement who has repeatedly denied the Palestinian national identity, “Muslim controlled countries have six hundred and forty-four times the amount of land Israel does. When people say Israel needs to give up something you kind of scratch your head and say let me see if I get this right. Why should these people [Israelis] give way when these people [Muslim countries] have a lot of room that they could say ‘we’ll carve out something.'”
Netanyahu stated in May that carrying out a plan Trump introduced earlier this year to forcibly displace Palestinians from Gaza and turn it into a “Middle East Riviera” was now a condition for ending Israel’s war on Gaza. “If the so-called Palestinians are so loved by the Muslim nations of the world, why won’t any of those nations at least offer to give temporary refuge to their brothers and sisters in Gaza?” he said in October 2023. And he told Politico in 2017, “There are certain words I refuse to use. There is no such thing as a West Bank. It’s Judea and Samaria. There’s no such thing as a settlement. They’re communities, they are neighbors, they are cities. There’s no such thing as an occupation,”
In Australia, Sky News reported last week the US ambassador to Israel has stepped in after the Albanese government cancelled the travel visa of Israeli-American advocate Hillel Fuld who was due to visit in the coming weeks. In a decision statement, Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke cited his “islamophobia rhetoric” which risked inciting discord against Australia’s Muslim population.
Related: https://maki.org.il/en/?p=32488
