jimmy carter palestine peace not apartheid

Jim­my Carter, Pales­tine Peace Not Apartheid”

palestine peace not apartheid

Fol­low­ing his #1 New York Times best­seller, Our Endan­gered Val­ues, the for­mer Pres­i­dent, win­ner of the Nobel Peace Prize, offers an assess­ment of what must be done to bring per­ma­nent peace to Israel with dig­ni­ty and jus­tice to Pales­tine in his lat­est work, Pales­tine Peace Not Apartheid” (Simon and Schus­ter, 2006).

Pres­i­dent Carter, who was able to nego­ti­ate peace between Israel and Egypt, has remained deeply involved in Mid­dle East affairs since leav­ing the White House. He has stayed in touch with the major play­ers from all sides in the con­flict and has made numer­ous trips to the Holy Land, most recent­ly as an observ­er in the Pales­tin­ian elec­tions of 2005 and 2006.

In this book Pres­i­dent Carter shares his inti­mate knowl­edge of the his­to­ry of the Mid­dle East and his per­son­al expe­ri­ences with the prin­ci­pal actors, and he address­es sen­si­tive polit­i­cal issues many Amer­i­can offi­cials avoid. Pulling no punch­es, Carter pre­scribes steps that must be tak­en for the two states to share the Holy Land with­out a sys­tem of apartheid or the con­stant fear of terrorism.

Below some of Carter’s key state­ments are reproduced.

Most Arab regimes have accept­ed the per­ma­nent exis­tence of Israel as an indis­putable fact and are no longer call­ing for an end to the State of Israel, hav­ing con­trived a com­mon state­ment at an Arab sum­mit in 2002 that offers peace and nor­mal rela­tions with Israel with­in its acknowl­edged inter­na­tion­al bor­ders and in com­pli­ance with oth­er U.N. Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil res­o­lu­tions. (p. 14)

Since 1924, She­baa Farms has been treat­ed as Lebanese ter­ri­to­ry, but Syr­ia seized the area in the 1950s and retained con­trol until Israel occu­pied the Farms — along with the Golan Heights – in 1967. The inhab­i­tants and prop­er­ties were Lebanese, and Lebanon has nev­er accept­ed Syr­i­a’s con­trol of the Farms. Although Syr­ia has claimed the area in the past, Syr­i­an offi­cials now state that it is part of Lebanon. This posi­tion sup­ports the Arab claim that Israel still occu­pies Lebanese ter­ri­to­ry. (pp. 98 – 9)

The best offer to the Pales­tini­ans [at Camp David in Decem­ber 2000] — by Clin­ton, not Barak — had been to with­draw 20 per­cent of the set­tlers, leav­ing more than 180,000 in 209 set­tle­ments, cov­er­ing about 10 per­cent of the occu­pied land, includ­ing land to be leased” and por­tions of the Jor­dan Riv­er val­ley and East Jerusalem.

The per­cent­age fig­ure is mis­lead­ing, since it usu­al­ly includes only the actu­al foot­prints of the set­tle­ments. There is a zone with a radius of about four hun­dred meters around each set­tle­ment with­in which Pales­tini­ans can­not enter. In addi­tion, there are oth­er large areas that would have been tak­en or ear­marked to be used exclu­sive­ly by Israel, road­ways that con­nect the set­tle­ments to one anoth­er and to Jerusalem, and life arter­ies” that pro­vide the set­tlers with water, sewage, elec­tric­i­ty, and com­mu­ni­ca­tions. These range in width from five hun­dred to four thou­sand meters, and Pales­tini­ans can­not use or cross many of these con­nect­ing links. This hon­ey­comb of set­tle­ments and their inter­con­nect­ing con­duits effec­tive­ly divide the West Bank into at least two non­con­tigu­ous areas and mul­ti­ple frag­ments, often unin­hab­it­able or even unreach­able, and con­trol of the Jor­dan Val­ley denies Pales­tini­ans any direct access east­ward into Jor­dan. About one hun­dred mil­i­tary check­points com­plete­ly sur­round Pales­tini­ans and block routes going into or between Pales­tin­ian com­mu­ni­ties, com­bined with an unac­count­able num­ber of oth­er roads that are per­ma­nent­ly closed with large con­crete cubes or mounds of earth and rocks.

There was no pos­si­bil­i­ty that any Pales­tin­ian leader could accept such terms and sur­vive, but offi­cial state­ments from Wash­ing­ton and Jerusalem were suc­cess­ful in plac­ing the entire onus for the fail­ure on Yasir Arafat. (pp. 151 – 2)

A new round of talks was held at Taba in Jan­u­ary 2001, dur­ing the last few days of the Clin­ton pres­i­den­cy, between Pres­i­dent Arafat and the Israeli for­eign min­is­ter, and it was lat­er claimed that the Pales­tini­ans reject­ed a gen­er­ous offer” put for­ward by Prime Min­is­ter Barak with Israel keep­ing only 5 per­cent of the West Bank. The fact is that no such offers were ever made. Barak lat­er said, It was plain to me that there was no chance of reach­ing a set­tle­ment at Taba. There­fore I said there would be no nego­ti­a­tions and there would be no del­e­ga­tion and there would be no offi­cial dis­cus­sions and no doc­u­men­ta­tion. Nor would Amer­i­cans be present in the room. The only thing that took place at Taba were non­bind­ing con­tacts between senior Israelis and senior Pales­tini­ans. (p. 152)

In April 2003 a Roadmap” for resolv­ing the Israeli-Pales­tin­ian con­flict was announced by U.N. Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al Kofi Annan on behalf of the Unit­ed States, the Unit­ed Nations, Rus­sia, and the Euro­pean Union (known as the Quartet).The Pales­tini­ans accept­ed the road map in its entire­ty but the Israeli gov­ern­ment announced four­teen caveats and pre­req­ui­sites, some of which would pre­clude any final peace talks. (p. 159)

Impris­on­ment wall” is more descrip­tive than secu­ri­ty fence.” (p. 174)

Gaza has main­tained a pop­u­la­tion growth rate of 4.7 per­cent annu­al­ly, one of the high­est in the world, so more than half its peo­ple are less than fif­teen years old. They are being stran­gled since the Israeli with­draw­al,” sur­round­ed by a sep­a­ra­tion bar­ri­er that is pen­e­trat­ed only by Israeli-con­trolled check­points, with just a sin­gle open­ing (for per­son­nel only) into Egyp­t’s Sinai as their access to the out­side world. There have been no moves by Israel to per­mit trans­porta­tion by sea or by air. Fish­er­men are not per­mit­ted to leave the har­bor, work­ers are pre­vent­ed from going to out­side jobs, the import or export of food and oth­er goods is severe­ly restrict­ed and often cut off com­plete­ly, and the police, teach­ers, nurs­es, and social work­ers are deprived of salaries. Per capi­ta income has decreased 40 per­cent dur­ing the last three years, and the pover­ty rate has reached 70 per­cent. The U.N. Spe­cial Rap­por­teur on the Right to Food has stat­ed that acute mal­nu­tri­tion in Gaza is already on the same scale as that seen in the poor­er coun­tries of the South­ern Sahara, with more than half of Pales­tin­ian fam­i­lies eat­ing only one meal a day. (p. 176)

The area between the seg­re­ga­tion bar­ri­er and the Israeli bor­der has been des­ig­nat­ed a closed mil­i­tary region for an indef­i­nite peri­od of time. Israeli direc­tives state that every Pales­tin­ian over the age of twelve liv­ing in the closed area has to obtain a per­ma­nent res­i­dent per­mit” from the civ­il admin­is­tra­tion to enable them to con­tin­ue to live in their own homes. They are con­sid­ered to be aliens, with­out the rights of Israeli citizens.

To sum­ma­rize : what­ev­er ter­ri­to­ry Israel decides to con­fis­cate will be on its side of the wall, but Israelis will still retain con­trol of the Pales­tini­ans who will be on the oth­er side of the bar­ri­er, enclosed between it and Israel’s forces in the Jor­dan Riv­er val­ley. (pp. 192 – 3)

The wall rav­ages many places along its devi­ous route that are impor­tant to Chris­tians. In addi­tion to enclos­ing Beth­le­hem in one of its most notable intru­sions, an espe­cial­ly heart­break­ing divi­sion is on the south­ern slope of the Mount of Olives, a favorite place for Jesus and his dis­ci­ples, and very near Bethany, where they often vis­it­ed Mary, Martha, and their broth­er, Lazarus. There is a church named for one of the sis­ters, San­ta Mar­ta Monastery, where Israel’s thir­ty-foot con­crete wall cuts through the prop­er­ty. The house of wor­ship is now on the Jerusalem side, and its parish­ioners are sep­a­rat­ed from it because they can­not get per­mits to enter Jerusalem. Its priest, Father Clau­dio Ghi­lar­di, says, For nine hun­dred years we have lived here under Turk­ish, British, Jor­dan­ian, and Israeli gov­ern­ments, and no one has ever stopped peo­ple com­ing to pray. It is scan­dalous. This is not about a bar­ri­er. It is a bor­der. Why don’t they speak the truth?”

Coun­ter­ing Israeli argu­ments that the wall is to keep Pales­tin­ian sui­cide bombers from Israel, Father Clau­dio adds a com­ment that describes the path of the entire bar­ri­er : The Wall is not sep­a­rat­ing Pales­tini­ans from Jews ; rather Pales­tini­ans from Pales­tini­ans.” Near­by are three con­vents that will also be cut off from the peo­ple they serve. The 2,000 Pales­tin­ian Chris­tians have lost their place of wor­ship and their spir­i­tu­al cen­ter. (pp. 194 – 5)

Inter­na­tion­al human rights orga­ni­za­tions esti­mate that since 1967 more than 630,000 Pales­tini­ans (about 20 per­cent of the total pop­u­la­tion) in the occu­pied ter­ri­to­ries have been detained at some time by the Israelis, arous­ing deep resent­ment among the fam­i­lies involved. Although the vast major­i­ty of pris­on­ers are men, there are a large num­ber of women and chil­dren being held. Between the ages of twelve and four­teen, chil­dren can be sen­tenced for a peri­od of up to six months, and after the age of four­teen Pales­tin­ian chil­dren are tried as adults, a vio­la­tion of inter­na­tion­al law. (pp. 196 – 7)

The unwa­ver­ing offi­cial pol­i­cy of the Unit­ed States since Israel became a state has been that its bor­ders must coin­cide with those pre­vail­ing from 1949 until 1967 (unless mod­i­fied by mutu­al­ly agree­able land swaps), spec­i­fied in the unan­i­mous­ly adopt­ed U.N. Res­o­lu­tion 242, which man­dates Israel’s with­draw­al from occu­pied ter­ri­to­ries. This oblig­a­tion was recon­firmed by Israel’s lead­ers in agree­ments nego­ti­at­ed in 1978 at Camp David and in 1993 at Oslo, for which they received the Nobel Peace Prize, and both of these com­mit­ments were offi­cial­ly rat­i­fied by the Israeli gov­ern­ment. Also, as a mem­ber of the Inter­na­tion­al Quar­tet that includes Rus­sia, the Unit­ed Nations, and the Euro­pean Union, Amer­i­ca sup­ports the Roadmap for Peace, which espous­es exact­ly the same require­ments. Pales­tin­ian lead­ers unequiv­o­cal­ly accept­ed this pro­pos­al, but Israel has offi­cial­ly reject­ed its key pro­vi­sions with unac­cept­able caveats and prerequisites.

The over­rid­ing prob­lem is that, for more than a quar­ter cen­tu­ry, the actions of some Israeli lead­ers have been in direct con­flict with the offi­cial poli­cies of the Unit­ed States, the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty, and their own nego­ti­at­ed agreements.Israel’s con­tin­ued con­trol and col­o­niza­tion of Pales­tin­ian land have been the pri­ma­ry obsta­cles to a com­pre­hen­sive peace agree­ment in the Holy Land. In order to per­pet­u­ate the occu­pa­tion, Israeli forces have deprived their unwill­ing sub­jects of basic human rights. No objec­tive per­son could per­son­al­ly observe exist­ing con­di­tions in the West Bank and dis­pute these state­ments. (pp. 207 – 9)

The Unit­ed States has used its U.N. Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil veto more than forty times to block res­o­lu­tions crit­i­cal of Israel. Some of these vetoes have brought inter­na­tion­al dis­cred­it on the Unit­ed States, and there is lit­tle doubt that the lack of a per­sis­tent effort to resolve the Pales­tin­ian issue is a major source of anti-Amer­i­can sen­ti­ment and ter­ror­ist activ­i­ty through­out the Mid­dle East and the Islam­ic world. (pp. 209 – 10)

The bot­tom line is this : Peace will come to Israel and the Mid­dle East only when the Israeli gov­ern­ment is will­ing to com­ply with inter­na­tion­al law, with the Roadmap for Peace, with offi­cial Amer­i­can pol­i­cy, with the wish­es of a major­i­ty of its own cit­i­zens – and hon­ors its own pre­vi­ous com­mit­ments – by accept­ing its legal bor­ders. All Arab neigh­bors must pledge to hon­or Israel’s right to live in peace under these con­di­tions. The Unit­ed States is squan­der­ing inter­na­tion­al pres­tige and good­will and inten­si­fy­ing glob­al anti-Amer­i­can ter­ror­ism by unof­fi­cial­ly con­don­ing or abet­ting the Israeli con­fis­ca­tion and col­o­niza­tion of Pales­tin­ian ter­ri­to­ries. (p. 216)

The gen­er­al para­me­ters of a long-term, two-state agree­ment are well-known, the for­mer Pres­i­dent writes. There will be no sub­stan­tive and per­ma­nent peace for any peo­ples in this trou­bled region as long as Israel is vio­lat­ing key UN res­o­lu­tions, offi­cial Amer­i­can pol­i­cy, and the inter­na­tion­al road map” for peace by occu­py­ing Arab lands and oppress­ing the Pales­tini­ans. Except for mutu­al­ly agree­able nego­ti­at­ed mod­i­fi­ca­tions, Israel’s offi­cial pre-1967 bor­ders must be hon­oured. As were all pre­vi­ous admin­is­tra­tions since the found­ing of Israel, US gov­ern­ment lead­ers must be in the fore­front of achiev­ing this long-delayed goal of a just agree­ment that both sides can honor.

Pales­tine Peace Not Apartheid is thus a chal­leng­ing, provoca­tive, and coura­geous book, wor­thy as expect­ed from a for­mer President. Jimmy Carter, "Palestine Peace Not Apartheid" 1Endmark


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2 responses to “Jim­my Carter, Pales­tine Peace Not Apartheid””

  1. Wen Wei Avatar
    Wen Wei

    i’d like to intro­duce the book of Pales­tine Peace not Apartheid to Chi­nese. could you tell me the e‑mail address of Jim­my Cart or the address of pub­lish­ing house ? i want to have the con­fir­ma­tion of right to trans­la­tion it. thank you.

  2. HeiGou Avatar
    HeiGou

    The gen­er­al para­me­ters of a long-term, two-state agree­ment are well-known, the for­mer Pres­i­dent writes. There will be no sub­stan­tive and per­ma­nent peace for any peo­ples in this trou­bled region as long as Israel is vio­lat­ing key UN res­o­lu­tions, offi­cial Amer­i­can pol­i­cy, and the inter­na­tion­al road map” for peace by occu­py­ing Arab lands and oppress­ing the Pales­tini­ans. Except for mutu­al­ly agree­able nego­ti­at­ed mod­i­fi­ca­tions, Israel’s offi­cial pre-1967 bor­ders must be hon­oured. As were all pre­vi­ous admin­is­tra­tions since the found­ing of Israel, US gov­ern­ment lead­ers must be in the fore­front of achiev­ing this long-delayed goal of a just agree­ment that both sides can honor.”

    But it is that last sen­tence that is the prob­lem with Jim­my’s whole approach. It is true that the gen­er­al para­me­ters of a long-term, two-state agree­ment are well-known. It is also true that they have been reject­ed by the major­i­ty of Pales­tini­ans and prob­a­bly oth­er Mus­lims as well. A just agree­ment is worth­less unless *both* *sides* hon­or it. Which Hamas is clear­ly not doing. Israel with­drew from Gaza. Hamas fires rock­ets every day. Israel with­drew from Lebanon. Hezbol­lah attacks Israel still. Israel with­drew from Sinai. Egyp­tians want war. Until Mus­lims accept Israel there can be no peace short of the destruc­tion of the state of Israel itself. Who wants that ? Not Israel that’s for sure. So poor lit­tle Jim­my is just wrong. There is no part­ner for peace with the Pales­tini­ans or any oth­er Mus­lim. There is no point try­ing to nego­ti­ate. The only thing that mat­ters is a lev­el of brute force suf­fi­cient to intim­i­date. Of course if a sin­gle Mus­lim here thinks that Israel is enti­tled to exist in peace behind the 1967 — or any oth­er mutal­ly agree­able — bor­der I am hap­py to change my mind. So over to you all, who is the right­ful own­er of Pales­tine ? Every sin­gle inch of it ?

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