by Etgar Lefkovits
Israel has “somewhat of a veto,” but it “doesn’t mean that the Turks can’t have some role” in the Gaza ceasefire, the U.S. ambassador tells JNS.
U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee said Thursday that disarming Hamas is “absolutely going to happen” and that he expects to see other countries in the region join the Abraham Accords next year.
He spoke as U.S. President’s Donald Trump’s Gaza ceasefire plan is expected to move to its second stage next month following the president’s anticipated meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Florida after Christmas.
“The challenge of getting Hamas disarmed is not a goal that has been abandoned,” Huckabee told JNS in an exclusive interview in his Jerusalem embassy office. “The president has been very clear: They have to disarm and recognize they have no future in Gaza.”
The U.S. envoy noted that despite Hamas’s very public refusal to disarm—calling into question how the ceasefire can move forward—the Trump administration backed by the international community is determined to see it happen.
“Am I concerned? Of course. … But do I feel it won’t happen? No. In part because of the consistency of the president’s message and demand, and in part because all the Arab partners are holding firm to that same commitment on the peace plan,” Huckabee said. “No one has backed off on that. Everyone still agrees to that.”
The ambassador continued, “It is absolutely going to happen. President Trump said they can do it the easy way or the hard way. Iran didn’t take him seriously. He told them the same thing: the easy way or the hard way. They took the hard way.”
Huckabee noted that the Oct. 10 ceasefire has held despite intermittent skirmishes in Gaza, with recruitment underway of countries to take part in an international security force for the Strip, and aid supplies reaching the enclave daily.
“We are definitely in a much better place than we were two months ago,” he said, heaping praise on Trump for forging the ceasefire agreement. “It’s the first time in two years that Israelis can go to bed without anticipation of missiles.”
In the interview, Huckabee acknowledged that Israel has “somewhat of a veto role” regarding the participation of Turkey in the future international security force, which the U.S. favors, but said that some role could be found for the Anatolian nation, in comments that suggested that a compromise was likely.
“We recognize Israel has a right to say—somewhat of a veto power on certain participation,” he said. “It doesn’t mean that the Turks can’t have some role.”
Steve Witkoff, the United States envoy to the Middle East, held talks in Miami later on Friday with senior officials from Qatar, Egypt and Turkey as efforts continue to advance to phase 2 of the Gaza ceasefire.
Expansion of the Abraham Accords
The ambassador also told JNS that he expects additional countries to make peace with Israel next year as part of the Abraham Accords.
“I’m just an ambassador not a prophet …, but based on everything I’m seeing and being a part of, I do anticipate that we will see the expansion of the Abraham Accords [in 2026],” Huckabee said. “I would not be overwhelmingly surprised if you didn’t see something that would happen very close to Israel, in Syria, Lebanon.”
The ambassador said that the regional situation was “fragile to be sure,” but that neighboring countries increasingly understand that there is far more to be gained from normalization with Israel than to be at odds with the Jewish state.
“President Trump is in a very good place to help deliver that,” Huckabee said. “I don’t think anybody else could do that. He has an uncanny ability to do things that everybody said cannot be done.”
‘Journalism is for the most part dead’
The U.S. envoy said in the interview that one of his greatest frustrations in an otherwise “dream job” was to follow the hostile media coverage of Israel during the war.
“There is an enormous level of evil in the world and a lot of it gets printed on the pages of what once were respected newspapers and sites,” Huckabee said. “I think for the most part journalism is dead. What we have now is an international opinion market.”
He cited false claims, including from U.S. allies such as the U.K, that Israel deliberately prolonged the war and was starving Gazans as canards that “gullible people soaked in like poisons.
“It has been so frustrating to watch this from a front-row seat right in the middle of this,” he said.
Huckabee also blasted continuous anonymous sources and leaks—frequently highlighted in the Israeli press—reporting tensions between the governments of Israel and the U.S., saying such reporting is purely agenda-driven.
“If there was some major dustup between the U.S. or President Trump and the prime minister of Israel, don’t you think his representative in Israel would be informed of that?” Huckabee asked. “It’s absurd. Do you really think I am sitting here in the U.S. embassy … and something of that magnitude is going on and I am oblivious to it?”
At home in Israel
The 70-year-old Baptist pastor, former Arkansas governor, television host and two-time Republican presidential candidate—who bills himself as a Maccabee—visited Israel scores of times and led thousands of participants on solidarity tours since his first trip to Israel right out of high school, just before the 1973 Yom Kippur War.
From his Jerusalem embassy perch, Huckabee lived through the multi-front war for six months after taking up his position in April (“I haven’t seen this much war since the Baptist Convention in 1982”) and expressed relief and appreciation that the days of scurrying to the bomb shelter at night have passed (“my wife no longer has her ‘missile clothes’ at the foot of the bed”), even as he voiced concern that the scourge of violence against Jews around the globe continues unabated.
He blasted the atmosphere of “irrational Jew-hatred” that has spurred a blast of antisemitism, including within his own party.
“I am constantly saying to my fellow Christians that every enemy that Israel has and the Jewish people has is ultimately the enemy of the Christian people and of America because our values systems are based on the same platform,” he said. “There is a Judeo-Christian underpinning not only to Israel but to the U.S. Without the heritage of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob there would be no Israel but there would also be no America.”
Huckabee said that he feels right at home in Israel in “the assignment of a lifetime.
“We went back home to Arkansas for the first time in November for five-and-a-half days, and it was great to see the grandkids, friends and neighbors,” he said. “And as we were packing up getting ready to come back, my wife and I looked and each other and said it is time to come back home.”
Etgar Lefkovits
Source: https://www.jns.org/huckabee-disarming-hamas-absolutely-going-to-happen/
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