Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee is pressing on with a provocative tour of Israel and backing Israel's policies at the heart of increasingly tense U.S.-Israeli relations, AP reported.
Huckabee says that establishing a Palestinian state in "the middle of the Jewish homeland" would be "unrealistic." He spoke to reporters on Tuesday.
A far-right group of religious nationalists is hosting Huckabee on a three-day tour of some of the most contentious hotspots in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
These include a West Bank settlement outpost that even Israel's hardline government considers illegal and an east Jerusalem housing project that Washington has demanded be halted.
Huckabee is considered a possible Republican presidential candidate in 2012.