Former GOP hopeful slams Obama over settlement policy

The U.S. has taken too harsh a stance against Israel on the issue of settlements, hindering peace negotiations, former Arkansas governor and presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee said during a visit to Israel yesterday.

Huckabee, a Southern Baptist preacher popular among the Republican Party's social conservatives, has been touted as a possible Republican candidate in 2012.

His three-day trip, focusing on visits to settlements and meetings with settler leaders, puts him in direct opposition to President Barack Obama and positions him even to the right of Israel's own hawkish prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

Obama has been pushing Israel to freeze settlements. And Netanyahu has pledged to dismantle unauthorized settlement outposts such as one Huckabee plans to visit.

The Obama administration has specifically criticized Israeli building plans in East Jerusalem, where Israeli control has never been internationally recognized and which the Palestinians want for the capital of a future state.

"It concerns me when there are some in the United States who would want to tell Israel that it cannot allow people to live in their own country, wherever they want," Huckabee said in East Jerusalem.

He said the Obama administration's emphasis on the settlement issue sets a condition that unnecessarily impedes peace talks.

Huckabee later attended a dinner at the Shepherd Hotel, the site of a controversial planned housing project in East Jerusalem. The Obama administration has called for Israel to suspend the project, which is funded by American millionaire Irving Moskowitz. Israel rejected the demand, saying East Jerusalem is part of Israel's capital.

Anti-settlement protesters held a demonstration outside the dinner, and the Israeli group Ir Amim, which promotes Jewish-Arab coexistence in Jerusalem, condemned Huckabee's visit to the hotel.

The group said in a statement that Huckabee "is seeking to regain his standing in the American political system by befriending extremists among settler organizations in Israel."