MA’ALEH ADUMIM – Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee planted an olive tree overlooking the Judean Desert on the southeastern edge of the Ma’aleh Adumim Tuesday, saying the tree would come to provide shade for a park in a planned neighborhood and slamming last month’s UN Security Resolution condemning Israeli communities as “embarrassing.” Huckabee added hopes that incoming US President Donald J. Trump moves the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.

Backed by a red banner reading ‘Build Israel Great Again’ just one day after the Jewish Home Knesset faction held its weekly meeting here in order to launch a campaign to annex the city, Huckabee took a selfie with Ma’aleh Adumim mayor Benny Kashriel to show that Israeli “settlements” are not a group of tents on isolated hilltops, but rather established cities.

“Ma’aleh Adumim is a remarkable place,” Huckabee said. “It is five times bigger than the town I grew up with, with 41,000 people.

Although Huckabee does not have an official role in the Trump transition team – he turned down a position in the new administration – the former governor’s visit to Israel just two weeks before inauguration day is seen as a sign of both the incoming administration’s support for expanding Israeli control in Judea and Samaria and as a statement of intention that the new president seeks to forge a new relationship after eight rocky years between Prime Minister Netanyahu and outgoing President Barack Obama.

“I don’t speak for the incoming administration, but I pray that his policies will be radically different than those of President Obama, which have been – to put it mildly – anti-Israel,” Huckabee said.