Huckabee: With Palestine recognition, Europeans gave Israel ‘green light to take more pieces’ of West Bank

US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee says Israel’s decision to approve the controversial E1 settlement project, preventing Palestinian contiguity in the West Bank, was a response to the decisions by Western countries to announce plans to recognize a Palestinian state.

Huckabee tells Al Arabiya that US President Donald Trump’s administration hasn’t taken a position on the E1 approval, but did reverse longstanding US policy in his first year by declaring that Israeli settlements in the West Bank are not a violation of international law.

“One of the reasons we’re seeing the more aggressive decision to move into some of these areas is because it’s in reaction to what the Europeans have done — in concert with the Palestinian Authority — pushing for a unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state… that has had a totally disastrous effect, not only on the tension in Judea and Samaria, but it’s had a detrimental effect on resolving things in Gaza,” Huckabee says.

The US has argued that Hamas hardened its stance in negotiations after countries began to recognize a Palestinian state, but the French decision that began the trend came after the terror group submitted its response that led to the collapse of negotiations in Doha last month.

Moreover, the Knesset passed a non-binding resolution in favor of annexing the West Bank, also prior to France’s decision.

“I don’t know what the Europeans thought they were going to accomplish, but by their actions, they’re accomplishing something that I don’t think they wanted to do, and that is to essentially to give a green light or encourage the Israelis to go ahead and take more pieces of Judea and Samaria, either by declaring sovereignty or annexation,” Huckabee says, referring to the West Bank by its biblical name.

“I don’t think that was their goal, but pushing for unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state without the cooperation and participation of Israel is a violation of Oslo,” Huckabee says.

“If there’s going to be this massive violation of the Oslo agreement, then I think people have to prepare for the consequences of that on both sides of the conflict,”

Israel has also been accused of violating the Oslo Accords due to a number of its policies in the West Bank and through its withholding of billions of shekels in tax revenues that belong to the PA.