U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee privately briefed lawmakers on the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday morning on the security and political situation in the West Bank and the war in Gaza.

The briefing was organized by Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY), who chairs the subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa, in response to efforts by France and other U.S. allies to recognize a Palestinian state. Despite a focus on the West Bank, attendees indicated that the briefing did not provide specific answers on any U.S. policy toward a potential Israeli move to annex all or part of the territory.

Lawler told Jewish Insider the briefing had included a “thorough discussion with the ambassador about Judea and Samaria and the challenges and the opportunities,” using the biblical term for the West Bank preferred by the Israeli government and utilized by the Foreign Affairs Committee.

“Given the insistence on the part of the French and other Europeans to recognize a Palestinian state, I thought it was important for my colleagues to have a greater understanding of what we’re actually talking about with respect to Judea and Samaria, or the West Bank, and how it is actually governed post-Oslo,” Lawler continued, referring to the peace accords brokered in the 1990s.

He noted that a majority of the West Bank is categorized as Area C, controlled by Israel, and said many people do not understand that.

Asked whether the group had discussed a potential declaration of Israeli sovereignty in that area, Lawler responded, “No, we had a broad discussion on the entirety of the situation there.”

Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) said he does not “think there’s any support in the United States for unilateral action by Israel to annex any territory.” Some congressional Republicans have indicated support for such a policy.

“[Huckabee] is against the unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state, and I urged [him] to be equally vocal against unilateral actions by settlers or even the Israeli government designed to prevent a Palestinian state. If you’re against this unilateral, you’re against that unilateral,” Sherman told JI.

He added that Huckabee’s “dedication to the hostages is palpable. You can feel it. You can see it.”

Asked whether the group had discussed potential Israeli annexation of the West Bank, Rep. Brad Schneider (D-IL) declined to address specific details of the closed-door briefing but said, “there was broad discussion on a lot of different issues, but we didn’t go in-depth into anything specifically.”

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said Wednesday that members of the Israeli government are formulating plans for annexation of the West Bank, potentially including all but six large Palestinian cities in the West Bank, with the goal of claiming “maximum territory and minimum population.” Israel is set to hold high-level discussions on the subject this week.

An envoy for the United Arab Emirates told The Times of Israel this week that “annexation would be a red line” for the UAE and would “foreclose the idea of regional integration and be the death knell of the two-state solution.”

The UAE joined the Abraham Accords in 2020 in part to halt then-pending plans for annexation of the West Bank.