Israel names Netanyahu ally, settler as US ambassador

The Israeli government said Sunday it had approved the nomination of Yechiel Leiter, an ally of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is wanted by the ICC in connection to alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Gaza, as the country’s ambassador to the United States.

The announcement comes after US President-elect Donald Trump named hard-line conservative Mike Huckabee as his choice for US ambassador to Israel under his incoming administration.

“The government has unanimously approved the appointment of Dr Yechiel Leiter as ambassador to the United States,” the foreign ministry said in a statement.

A former adviser to Netanyahu, Leiter, 65, is originally from the United States and currently lives in a settlement in the occupied West Bank. Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory are considered illegal under international law.

Close to the US Republican Party, Leiter used to be one of the leaders of the Yesha Council, an umbrella group representing Israeli settlers in the West Bank in the 1990s.

He is also a member of Netanyahu’s Likud party and currently works as a strategic adviser to Israeli think tanks.

His son, Moshe Leiter, was killed in combat in November 2023 in the Gaza Strip, where Israel has been waging a deadly military onslaught for over a year, killing more than 44,000 Palestinians.

Yechiel Leiter will take on the ambassador role after Trump’s inauguration next year, succeeding Mike Herzog, President Isaac Herzog’s brother, who was appointed in 2021.

Leiter has criticised US President Joe Biden, slamming “American pressure” during the war in Gaza in an interview with private Israeli channel Tov in January.

Israel welcomed Huckabee’s nomination this month, as he is a stalwart supporter of the country’s government.

In 2017, he was present in Maale Adumim for the expansion of one of Israel’s largest settlements in the West Bank.

Huckabee has also gone on to deny that the West Bank has ever been occupied, and refers to the territory as Judea and Samaria  – a term commonly by used right-wing and far-right Israelis.