The United States ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, has sparked controversy after stating he would not oppose Israel taking control of large parts of the Middle East, according to media reports.
In an interview aired Friday with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, Huckabee linked Israel’s borders to biblical references when asked about the country’s territorial limits. Carlson noted that certain scriptural passages describe territory stretching from the Euphrates River in Iraq to the Nile in Egypt.
“It would be fine if they took it all,” Huckabee said, before adding that Israel was not actively seeking to expand its territory. When pressed on whether he genuinely supported such expansion, the ambassador responded that Israel was not asking to “take it over.”
He later characterised his remarks as “somewhat of a hyperbolic statement,” but suggested that territorial changes could be reconsidered in the context of war. “If they end up getting attacked by all these places, and they win that war, and they take that land, OK, that’s a whole other discussion,” he said.
Huckabee, an evangelical Christian and longtime conservative supporter of Israel, was appointed ambassador by US President Donald Trump last year.
The envoy has previously drawn criticism for comments on Palestinian statehood. In June 2025, he said he did not believe the creation of an independent Palestinian state remained a US foreign policy objective. The US State Department later clarified that Huckabee was speaking in a personal capacity.
When asked whether his remarks reflected a policy shift, State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce declined to comment, saying foreign policy decisions rest with the president and the White House.
In earlier remarks cited by Bloomberg, Huckabee questioned whether a future Palestinian state would necessarily have to be located in the West Bank — referred to by the Israeli government as Judea and Samaria — suggesting that land could instead be allocated from another Muslim-majority country.
The comments come amid ongoing international legal and diplomatic scrutiny of Israel’s policies in the occupied territories. In 2024, the International Court of Justice ruled that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories is illegal and must end immediately.