MIKE HUCKABEE HAS A BETTER GRASP OF THE ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN CONFLICT THAN OBAMA

Obama is still acting under the illusion that in Mahmoud Abbas the Israelis have a ‘true partner in peace.’

HUCKABEE TO OBAMA: PALESTINIANS HAVE ‘ZERO INTEREST’ IN MIDEAST PEACE
By Jim Meyers and Kathleen Walter

Newsmax
March 20, 2013

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee tells Newsmax that President Obama won’t succeed in restarting peace talks in the Middle East because the Palestinians have “zero interest” in negotiations.

The 2008 Republican presidential candidate also says the administration’s dealings with Mohammed Morsi and Egypt are “foreign policy gone wild,” and warns that the United States will be viewed as a “toothless tiger” if Obama doesn’t respond as promised to the use of chemical weapons in Syria.

Huckabee is now the host of “The Mike Huckabee Show,” broadcast on 227 radio stations in 48 states, and a Fox News contributor. His latest book is “Dear Chandler, Dear Scarlett: A Grandfather’s Thoughts on Faith, Family and the Things That Matter Most.”

President Obama is making his first official trip to Israel and the Palestinian territories this week. In an exclusive interview with Newsmax TV, Huckabee was asked if Obama will be able to get the Israelis and Palestinians back to the negotiating table.

“I don’t see that happening, in large measure because the Palestinians have shown zero interest in doing what it will take to have a legitimate and thoughtful negotiation,” he says.

“You’ve got a Palestinian regime that has embraced Hamas, put them in power in Gaza. So on one hand you’re supposed to negotiate with the group of people that even the State Department has declared a terrorist organization, an organization that has launched rockets at civilian targets in Israel.

“You’ve got a Palestinian government that refuses Israel’s right to exist. It’s really hard to negotiate with someone when they don’t even believe you have a right to exist, much less exist with a level of safety and security.

“If the president honestly believes he can do something about the peace process, he’s not smoking a peace pipe — there’s something else in that pipe.”

Huckabee also declares that with Obama in the White House, he doesn’t believe the U.S.-Israel relationship “has ever been rockier. Every president, Democrat or Republican, has been a steadfast partner with Israel because they recognize that Israel is the only country in the Middle East whose government is a government of legitimate freedom and democracy, where free speech, rights of women, rights of education, freedom of the press exist.

“In all the other regimes around Israel you have totalitarian governments, hard dictators, a very different kind of environment than in Israel.

“The president’s got to go in there and convince the Israelis that he no longer is going to make these ridiculous speeches like he did in Cairo back in 2009, where he essentially asked nothing of the Palestinians, but he has been over the top in demanding that Israel not build in Judea and Samaria.

“It is not the role of a U.S. president to determine that Israelis have the right to build bedrooms for their kids. Rather than condemning Israelis for building bedrooms, we ought to be fighting the Iranians for building bombs.”

Israeli officials believe that U.S. policymaking in the region has been naïve in failing to anticipate the rise of Islamist forces in the wake of the Arab uprisings, and Jordan’s King Abdullah has criticized the administration’s dealings with Egyptian President Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood.

Asked if the president and Secretary of State John Kerry will be playing a more active role in supporting non-Islamist forces in the region, Huckabee responds: “I would like to think that they would play a more active role, but first they have to get their head screwed on straight as to what role the United States has in standing up for our friends and not abandoning the few people in the Middle East that actually pretend to like us.

“The president was so incredibly quick to demand Hosni Mubarak step down from the Egyptian government — and I’m not defending all the actions of Mubarak — but he kept peace in the Middle East, he maintained the treaty with Israeli, and he remained a friend of the United States, refusing to let radical Islamists take control and infiltrate the government.

“Now you’ve got a president of Egypt who openly says Jews are bloodsuckers and the descendants of apes and pigs. That’s something we never would have tolerated in previous administrations and yet John Kerry goes over and gives him a $250 million cash check, plus F-16s, plus Abrams tanks. It’s foreign policy gone wild.”