Huckabee comments on Palestinian statehood out of step with bipartisan support for Israel

Republican presidential candidate and former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee’s recent comments rejecting the need for a Palestinian state alongside Israel are deeply troubling and fly in the face of decades of bipartisan support for a two-state solution.

Huckabee’s remarks–calling the two-state solution “irrational and unworkable” and claiming that “there’s plenty of land in the world” outside Israel and the territory it controls for a Palestinian state–put him far outside the mainstream of Americans and American Jews who continue to support the two-state solution as the only way to ensure a safe, Jewish and democratic Israel.

This conflict will not end by denying the legitimate rights of either people to a homeland between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. But it must end–Israel’s future depends on it.

Politicians who deny the urgent need for a two-state solution jeopardize the democratic foundations of the US-Israel relationship and risk condemning both Israelis and Palestinians to unending conflict.

We call on all presidential candidates to stand with their Republican and Democratic predecessors in support of a two-state peace, a Jewish and democratic Israel and a US-Israel relationship built on shared values and interests.