Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, has laid a ceremonial brick at a Jewish settlement in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and said he might one day buy a “holiday home” there.

The two-time Republican presidential hopeful and father of the White House press secretary, Sarah Sanders, used a cement trowel to pave a wall in the community of Efrat as a symbolic gesture of support.

Anthony Scaramucci, who spent 11 days as the US president’s communications director, was also due to attend, according to the event’s organisers, but minutes before the press conference they said he was sick and could not make it.



“I’m building because I one day might want to purchase a holiday home here in Efrat,” he told journalists at an event supported by settler organisations.

“If President Trump could be here today, he’d be a very happy man,” he said, standing in front of a red sign that said “Build Israel Great Again”, a twist on Donald Trump’s campaign slogan.

“I certainly can say that the president would be very proud to see beautiful, wonderful, thriving neighbourhoods being built,” said Huckabee, who has visited Israel since he was 17 and has been an outspoken settlement backer.

Mike Huckabee lays a brick at a new housing complex in the West Bank settlement of Efrat, on 1 August. Photograph: Oded Balilty/AP

Trump would have been pleased to join him, he said, “because he is a builder and he loves to see construction sites”.

But the evangelical Christian added: “I’m not speaking for my government. I’m speaking for myself and God.”

The White House has said it does not see the existence of settlements as an “impediment to peace”, but that further construction and expansion would “not be helpful”. The current US ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, Trump’s former personal lawyer who had no prior diplomatic experience, said he considers settlements as “part of Israel”.

Yigal Dilmoni, who works for the Yesha Council, a coalition of municipal council from Jewish settlements, attended the bricklaying event and said settlers felt they had support from the Trump administration.



“When Trump got inside the White House, something changed between the United States and Israel,” he said.

Israel captured and occupied the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem in the 1967 war with Jordan, Egypt and Syria. It left Gaza in 2005 but maintains control over most of the West Bank, where the Palestinians have limited self-rule and are excluded from certain roads built for settlers.

There are more than half a million Israelis in the West Bank and East Jerusalem in settlements regarded as illegal by the international community. Violence between settlers and Palestinians is common. On Friday, a 17-year-old Palestinian stabbed three Israelis, one of them fatally.

Huckabee said settlement building in Efrat was “really a bridge to peace” as more than 1,000 Palestinians were earning salaries from the construction work.