HUCKABEE ENDS VISIT TO ISRAEL

HUCKABEE: THERE CAN BE NO PALESTINIAN STATE HERE

Israel Today staff
August 19, 2009

Wrapping up his visit to the Holy Land on Tuesday, former US presidential candidate Mike Huckabee said it was "unrealistic" to propose establishing a sovereign Palestinian Arab state alongside the Jewish state of Israel.

Huckabee suggested that the small sliver of land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea is simply too small to support two sovereign states, especially when many of the citizens of one seek the eradication of the other.

"There is going to be nothing but conflict" is the international community insists on layering two governments and two nations so often at odds with each other, he said.

Huckabee's recommendation is that the international community honor its decision made at the San Remo Conference in 1920 to return the entirety of the land to Jewish control, and to find a different place for the Palestinians to call their national home.

While he didn't go into specifics, many Israelis to the right of the political spectrum have noted that at San Remo, the international community also ceded to Jewish control all of what is today the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. When the territory east of the Jordan River was separated to make room for another Arab state, that should have satisfied past and present calls for a Palestinian national homeland. In fact, 70 percent of Jordan's population are "Palestinians."

Huckabee is touted by some as a frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012. Huckabee refrained to say if he would run for that office or not, but did say that as US president he would defer to Israel regarding how best to solve the conflict, even though he personally doesn't see the two-state solution as workable.