Mike Huckabee, Ready to Pander to the Israel Lobby

Former GOP Arkansas governor, Fox News host and presumed presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee is in Israel and he tweets:

I’ll be in Israel this week and touring the highly disputed settlements that Obama and Hillary are trying to stop.

“Highly disputed” is one way of putting it. “Illegal” is another, and “contrary to Israeli obligations under the Annapolis accord” is a third. The timing of Huckabee’s visit is also significant. While Huckabee’s in Israel and the occupied West Bank — granted, it’s a 140-character tweet, but he implies that the settlements are in Israel, which they’re not; they’re in the Israeli-occupied West Bank — Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak is in Washington meeting with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton today and President Obama tomorrow. Mubarak’s message:

In White House meetings beginning Monday, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt is expected to tell the Obama administration that Arab nations want peace, but are unwilling to abide Mr. Obama’s call to make good-faith concessions to Israel until Israel takes tangible steps like freezing settlements, an Egyptian official said.

In other words, Huckabee will be in Israel at just the moment when Israel’s ostensible friends on the American right want to hear that the United States will support settlement construction and other obstructionist Israeli behavior and face no U.S. reprisals — regardless of the actual consequences for Israel of turning away from a two-state solution. And there’s a lot of room in the GOP field for precisely the politician to do that.