U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee issued a  warning Sunday, blasting European efforts to unilaterally recognize a Palestinian state at the United Nations later this month as a direct violation of the Oslo Accords that risks destabilizing the region and emboldening terror groups.

In an interview with the BBC’s Laura Kuenssber, Huckabee said that the recognition drive — spearheaded by countries including France — has already undermined hostage negotiations with Hamas and may prompt Israel to expand sovereignty over swaths of Yehuda and Shomron.

“I wish that they’d have thought about the implications,” Huckabee said. “When France announced it would recognize Palestine, Hamas walked away from the negotiations to let the hostages go.”

He added that the move sends Israel the message that “if we’re going to be forced into something that goes against Oslo … now Israel is talking about declaring sovereignty over more parts of Judea and Samaria. Whatever the thought was, no matter how noble it may have seemed, it has had disastrous consequences that have proven to do the exact opposite of what many European countries thought would be a great idea.”

Huckabee stressed that unilateral recognition directly contradicts the framework of the 1990s Oslo Accords, which envisioned eventual Palestinian statehood through mutual negotiation, not international fiat. “Unilaterally declaring a Palestinian state is a violation of the Oslo Accords that everybody thought would lead to a Palestinian state,” he said.

The ambassador also repeated his framing of Israel’s war with Hamas as more than a political conflict. Speaking to CNB News last week, Huckabee described the struggle as “a spiritual conflict, a battle of the ages … It’s heaven versus hell, it’s good versus evil.”

He invoked the October 7 Hamas massacre, calling it “a level of evil the likes of which, you just look throughout all history, and you’d be hard-pressed to find anything like it.”

“You stand with Israel not for its government,” he continued, “but for the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the Law, the Light, the foundation of Western civilization.”

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)