Senate confirms former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee as Trump's ambassador to Israel

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate voted Wednesday to confirm former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee as the Trump administration’s ambassador to Israel, two days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's White House visit.

The 53-46 vote installs a vehement supporter of Israel in the key Mideast post, which may prove critical to Trump’s unsuccessful efforts so far to end the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, the conflict with Hezbollah in Lebanon and threats posed to Israel by Iran.

Netanyahu left his meeting Monday with Trump largely empty-handed, in stark contrast to his triumphant visit two months ago. During an hourlong Oval Office appearance, Trump appeared to slap down, contradict or complicate each of Netanyahu’s policy prerogatives, from eliminating 17% tariffs on Israeli imports to sidelining Iran.

Trump instead held firm to the tariffs and then announced that the United States and Iran would hold talks over the Iranian nuclear program beginning this weekend. Israel and Netanyahu in particular have been very wary of any discussions with Iran, which Israelis regard as an existential threat.

Senate confirmation of Huckabee, a well-known evangelical Christian, may come as a bit of a relief for Israeli officials, although he told lawmakers during a hearing last month that he would “carry out the president’s priorities, not mine” as ambassador.

That pledge came in response to questions about some of his past statements about the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian people.

“I am not here to articulate or defend my own views or policies, but to present myself as one who will respect and represent the president, whose overwhelming election by the people will hopefully give me the honor of serving as ambassador to the state of Israel,” Huckabee said at the time.

Huckabee acknowledged his past support for Israel’s right to annex the West Bank and incorporate its Palestinian population into Israel but said it would not be his “prerogative” to carry out that policy.

Huckabee, a one-time presidential hopeful, also has repeatedly backed referring to the West Bank by its biblical name of “Judea and Samaria,” a term that right-wing Israeli politicians and activists have thus far fruitlessly pushed the U.S. to accept.

Most notably, he has long opposed the idea of a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinian people. In an interview last year, he went even further, saying that he does not even believe in referring to the Arab descendants of people who lived in British-controlled Palestine as “Palestinians.”