The News
The US ambassador to Israel outraged Islamic countries by saying Israel annexing much of the Middle East would be “fine.”
Mike Huckabee said that Israel had a Biblical right to parts of Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria, sparking Arab and Muslim governments to decry his comments as “dangerous and inflammatory.”
Washington said the remarks were taken out of context, but they are just one example of its diplomats not being very diplomatic: The new US envoy to South Africa is a former opponent of anti-apartheid activists who has pushed unsubstantiated claims of white genocide in the country, while Paris took exception to the US ambassador’s comments about the recent killing of a hard-right activist.
Mohammed’s view
The intensity of the reaction reflects a longstanding fear among Arabs of an expansionist Israel, a concern periodically reinforced by some Israeli officials and US evangelical Christians such as Huckabee.
That the ambition is implausible — Israel would have to displace tens of millions of people to realize “Greater Israel” — doesn’t matter: the notion widens divisions in a region Washington is trying to knit into a stable, prosperous bloc as part of its long-term strategic competition with China. (Long-term, but not by biblical standards.)