Huckabee Takes on Two States; Plus, "There's no such thing as a Palestinian"

Mike Huckabee's trip to Israel just keeps getting more and more interesting.  As the blogger Spencer Ackerman notes, he has staked out a position to the right of Hamas, which has at least nominally accepted the de facto right of Israel to exist. From TPM, Huckabee said:

There is no room for a Palestinian state "in the middle of the Jewish homeland" and Israel should be able to build settlements wherever it wants.

Does this mean what I think it means? This is clearly not in the best interests of Israel. It goes against the two-state solution with a vehemence not seen of late by mainstream politicians in the US. Frankly, the real pro-Israel thing to do would be to explicitly state how for Israel to remain a Jewish democracy the status quo must change. This means creating a process that will, as Obama relayed earlier today in his press conference with President Mubarak, "move away from a status quo that is not working for the Israeli people, the Palestinian people, or, I think, the region as a whole."

While it is not surprising that Huckabee zealously defends the status quo and the right of Israelis to expand the settlements; what is surprising is how he does it through the guise of battling segregation. In this interview last night on Fox news, Huckabee compared the right of Americans to live where they want with the right of Israelis to do the same.

How many people in America would tolerate it if another government told Americans what neighborhoods they could and couldn't live in...

We've seen it in the United States. Segregation is a policy that does not promote the types of relationships and healing that is needed. The reality is that the Obama administration seems to be very concerned about 20 families moving into an Israeli owned apartment complex. It doesn't seem to be the reason that we should be so upset....

Most Americans understand that people have a right to live where they want to live, it's part of liberty, it's part of freedom...

Sure, people have the right to live where they want to, but certain restraints also come into play. Israel, as a signator to the Fourth Geneva Convention is obligated to be responsible for the people under its dominion. In the West Bank, where literally every country in the world, including the US but excluding Israel, views Israel as an occupying power, there is the requirement  that the occupier cannot 'deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.' The settlements are not going anywhere, and the bigger ones close to the green line will most likely be incorporated into Israel proper in a final agreement through a land swap with the Palestinians. However, this does not minimize the absurdity of the US neighborhood to Israeli settlement comparison. This comparison is worse that comparing apples and orange; it's more like comparing hummus and pizza; sure they are both food, but that is about where it starts and stops. The continuation of the growth of the settlements endangers the very Jewish democracy that Huckabee praises since it further entrenches the Israeli presence in the West Bank. 

Turning our attention to the segregation point. This could not be further from the truth. Right now, through its elaborate system of bypass roads in the territories and uneven government allocation vis-à-vis Jewish and Arab Israelis, Israel is essentially taking steps to create a segregated society. In essence, to take Huckabee at his word, Palestinians (and not just those resident in East Jerusalem) in the territories should have the same rights as Israelis and be able to buy land in Jerusalem. As we all know, this is far from the truth. Huckabee's call for settlement growth is basically a call for a one-state solution. In time, demographics will change and as Hagit Ofran of Peace Now recently noted:

By 2015 the number of Palestinians in both the West Bank and Israel was likely to exceed the number of Jews, by 51.5 percent to 48.5%. She said that these projections were based on numbers from the Central Bureau of Statistics in Israel and the PA.

I wonder what Huckabee thinks about that possible development and how it portends for Israeli democracy and Israel's Jewish identity? Odds are he wouldn't have a problem with it considering his point of view on the Palestinians.

After a quick Google search, a video of Huckabee taking part in a very telling back and forth with some members of the Wellesley-Weston Chabad in November of 2007 was found. As Huckabee stated:

...But there's no such thing as a Palestinian. 

There is really no such thing. That has been a political tool to try to force land away from Israel. My point is, if that's the issue, if its real estate, if you look at a map, and say here is how much Israel has and here is how much the Arab states hold, there is plenty of land. Let them take it out of Egypt. Let's take it out of Syria. Let'em take it out of Jordan.

Ok, let's paraphrase this - The Palestinians are a 'political tool' to obtain Israeli land. I always knew identity was malleable, I didn't know it was erasable. For Huckabee, it seems whatever the Israeli Jews do is right, and whatever the Palestinians do is not, including expressing their national identity. As Ackerman sums up the utter nonsense and fanaticism of Huckabee:

If I gave a speech saying that Israel had the right, invested in it by God, to permanently rule over millions of disenfranchised Palestinians in violation of their rights and their legitimate aspirations, I'd be outing myself as a dangerous fanatic who has no problem with a Jewish democracy becoming a Jewish apartheid state.