Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who President-elect Donald Trump announced Tuesday was his pick to serve as US ambassador to Israel, previously argued that there was “no such thing as a Palestinian.”
Huckabee, who has been a strong defender of Israel throughout his career, made the statement during his 2008 presidential campaign, asserting that Palestinian identity was “a political tool to try and force land away from Israel.”
In a video obtained by CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski during Huckabee’s 2015 run for president, Huckabee suggested that if a Palestinian state were to be created, it should be in neighboring countries like Egypt, Syria or Jordan, rather than within Israel’s borders.
“Basically, there really is no such thing as — I need to be careful about saying this, because people will really get upset — there’s really no such thing as a Palestinian,” Huckabee said at a 2008 campaign stop in Massachusetts while speaking to two Orthodox Jewish men. “There’s not.”
In response to a question from one of the men about the possibility of a Palestinian state existing outside of Israel, Huckabee said he believed this was the preferable option.
“You have Arabs and Persians,” Huckabee continued at the 2008 appearance. “And there’s such complexity in that. But there’s really no such thing. That’s been a political tool to try and force land away from Israel.”
In the video, which was previously published by BuzzFeed, Huckabee added that he thought a Palestinian state could be made out of land in Egypt, Syria or Jordan.
“My point is, if that’s the issue, if it’s 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,” he said.
Huckabee reiterated that point during a 2015 interview on Israeli TV, in which he argued that a two-state solution was “irrational and unworkable” and said “there’s plenty of land” outside of Israel in the “rest of the world” for a Palestinian state.
CNN reached out to Huckabee and the Trump transition team for comment on whether Huckabee stands by his comments.