US Republican presidential candidate: West Bank is part of Israel

“There’s nothing in any of the comments that I’ve made that I feel to be inaccurate or inflammatory”, he said.

The press conference followed meetings with senior Israeli figures, including prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu, and followed his visit to the settlement of Shilo on the occupied West Bank where he held a private fundraiser with wealthy American settlers.

Ben Dror Yemini, a columnist for the newspaper Yediot Ahronot, says he has written repeatedly in support of the prime minister’s outspoken criticism of the deal over the last five years, but that the decision to jump into the congressional fight over approval has put Israel into a “lose-lose” situation.

Atypically for an American politician, Huckabee traveled Tuesday evening to the Jewish community of Shiloh, located in Judea and Samaria, commonly known as the West Bank.

He declined, however, to reveal how much money he had raised.

The US and Israel have vowed to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

“I’m not sure”, he said.

Next on his itinerary, Huckabee plans to address the Waldorf Astoria in Jerusalem Wednesday at a press conference.

And no, Huck wasn’t talking about the existing wall between Israel and the West Bank.

He said he has never supported a two-state solution that would see Israelis removed from their homes in settlements in the West Bank, but refused to say how he would deal with the millions of Palestinians living in the region without a two-state solution.

“I don’t see it that way”, he said. “We shouldn’t go against Obama”. “But, they’re also people that take their security very seriously because they have to”, he explained.

To emphasize his point, Huckabee noted Iran’s continued description of the U.S.as the “Great Satan”, while Israel is their “small target”.

He said Israel is “a country that most reflects the mirror image of the American spirit”. In 2012, Mitt Romney campaigned in both Israel and London, courting top donors like Sheldon Adelson.

Huckabee said he “absolutely” stands by his remarks, and blasted Obama not only for his Iran policy but his Middle East policy overall.

In another ill-judged intervention, Huckabee told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer this week that the civil rights leader Dr Martin Luther King would be “appalled” by the Black Lives Matter movement .

“I don’t think if you sit down the average person and said “talk to me about Mike Huckabee” this would ever come up”, he said. But all lives matter.

“If a group of Washington insiders think they can convince Republican primary voters that a southern Republican conservative governor, who oversaw the execution of 16 people – the most in Arkansas history – is somehow ‘soft on crime, ‘ they are sadly mistaken”, her statement said.