Join AFSC and President Carter in Standing for Peace
12.16.2006 | American Friends Service Committee By Adam Horowitz
Dear Faces of Hope Supporter,
As we enter the holiday season there are several reasons to be hopeful about a new direction for U.S. policy towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In the last month two new important voices have come to the forefront of the issue in the United States. Both Jimmy Carter and the Iraq Study Group have made similar recommendations for dialog and negotiation as the key for resolving the conflict. President Carter has made an especially important call for peace in his recent book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.
It is important that we tell Congress that we stand with President Carter in his belief that the United States has an important role to play in working to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by supporting human rights, international law and diplomacy. As President Carter points out "The United States is squandering international prestige and goodwill . . . by unofficially condoning and abetting the Israel confiscation and colonization of Palestinian territories."
Take Action Now: Tell Congress you stand with President Carter >
In their recent report the Iraq Study Group echoed this sentiment. Their report states that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will only end through negotiation, and that "the United States does its ally Israel no favors in avoiding direct involvement to solve the Arab-Israeli conflict." One way the White House can do this is to veto the Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act which places devastating economic and diplomatic sanctions on the Palestinian people.
Please take this opportunity to send this important message to Congress. The U.S. has refused to take a proactive role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for too long. This policy cannot continue, the stakes are too high. As President Carter has shown the choice is clear: Peace or Apartheid.
Peace,
Adam Horowitz, For AFSC's Faces of Hope Campaign
P.S. It's not too late to support Palestinian olive farmers this holiday season. You can now buy Fair Trade Palestinian olive oil through AFSC's online store: [www.afscstore.org].
Carter, however, was stunned by the proposal.
"I don't want to have a conversation even indirectly with Dershowitz," Carter said. "There is no need to for me to debate somebody who, in my opinion, knows nothing about the situation in Palestine."
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/18/2006 10:20 by Krim.
Finkelstein on Jimmy Carter's Peace Not Apartheid (New York: 2006)
Some brief observations
MS Word original (48K
Hardcover: 288 pages Publisher: Simon & Schuster (November 14, 2006) Language: English ISBN: 0743285026
The historical chapters of Peace Not Apartheid are rather thin, filled with errors small and large, as well as tendentious and untenable interpretations. But few persons will be reading it for the history.
It is what Carter has to say about the present that will interest the reading public and the media (assuming the book is not ignored). It can be said with certainty that Israel's apologists will not be pleased. Although Carter includes criticisms of the Palestinians to affect balance,[1] it is clear that he holds Israel principally responsible for the impasse in the peace process. The most scathing criticisms of Israel come in Chapter 16 ("The Wall as a Prison". One hopes that this chapter (and the concluding "Summary" will be widely disseminated.
Below I reproduce some of Carter's key statements (my boldface).
Norman G. Finkelstein (10 November 2006) www.NormanFinkelstein.com
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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)
Notes
1. E.g., Carter writes: "With a single-mindedness amounting to tunnel vision, Palestinians see the restoration of their rights, defined by international law, as the key to peace throughout the broader Middle East, including the Gulf states" (p. 187). What's wrong with grounding rights and peace in international law?
First published 2007-01-28, Last Updated 2007-01-28 15:05:40
Jimmy Carter’s Cry from the Heart
In palestine: peace not Apartheid, Jimmy Carter speaks of dipping in the Jordan River where Jesus was baptized, holding Arafat's baby daughter on his knee, and his utmost admiration for Anwar Sadat - among other memories, fond and bitter. And he takes a courageous stand in describing the oppression of the palestinians by Israel, and strongly challenges Washington's status quo on Israel, notes patrick Seale.
The world rightly celebrates those Gentiles who, at the risk of their lives, saved Jews from extermination by the Nazis during the Second World War. In much the same way, Jimmy Carter deserves a monument for his brave efforts to save the palestinians from Israel’s cruel and determined attempt to destroy them as a people.
In daring to criticise Israel in his new book, palestine: peace not Apartheid, Jimmy Carter has not risked death. But he has faced character assassination by Jewish groups, wounding attacks by fellow Democrats, such as Nancy pelosi, the new Speaker of the House of Representatives, and vilification by former associates of his Carter Center at Atlanta, Georgia, which he set up to promote conflict resolution, monitor elections and keep alive the faltering Arab-Israeli peace process.
Carter’s fate demonstrates yet again the perils for a public figure in the United States to arouse the fury of the Jewish lobby and its many supporters. The use of the word apartheid in his book’s title, and its repeated use in the text, has outraged Israel’s most fervent supporters. But Jimmy Carter, the very archetype of an honest politician, believes in calling a spade a spade.
He bluntly describes "the policy now being followed" by the Israeli government as "[A] system of apartheid, with two peoples occupying the same land but completely separated from each other, with Israelis totally dominant and suppressing violence by depriving palestinians of their basic human rights."
president of the United States from 1977 to 1980, Jimmy Carter is a pious and practicing Christian. His passionate devotion to the cause of Middle East peace stems from his Christian faith. "Having studied Bible lessons since early childhood," he writes, "and taught them for twenty years, I was infatuated with the Holy Land." On an early visit to Israel before he became president, he describes how he "took a quick dip in the Jordan River near where I thought Jesus had been baptized by John the Baptist."
But Jimmy Carter’s devotion to the cause of justice for the palestinians has another psychological source: his sense of having been double-crossed by Menachem Begin, Israel’s former prime minister.
Carter was the architect of the Camp David Accords of 1978 signed by Begin and by Egypt’s president Anwar al-Sadat, which laid the foundations for the Israel-Egypt peace treaty the following year.
But the Accords also prescribed "full autonomy" for the inhabitants of the occupied territories, withdrawal of Israeli military and civilian forces from the West Bank and Gaza, and the recognition of the palestinian people as a separate political entity with a right to determine their own future, a major step towards a palestinian state.
Carter thought he had a promise from Begin to freeze settlement construction during the talks on the final status of the West Bank and Gaza in which the palestinians, as specified in the Accords, were to participate as equals. Instead, Begin "finessed or deliberately violated" his promise.
In a passage of sharp self-criticism, Carter writes: "perhaps the most serious omission of the Camp David talks was the failure to clarify in writing Begin’s verbal promise concerning the settlement freeze."
Carter’s book is written in simple, guileless language, but burning anger at Israel’s behaviour is the underlying theme.
He describes how he forced Israel out of Lebanon after its 1978 invasion by threatening to notify Congress that U.S. weapons were being used illegally. When, during Ronald Reagan’s presidency, Israel invaded Lebanon again in 1982, Carter writes: "I was deeply troubled by this invasion, and I expressed my concern to some top Israeli leaders… Back came a disturbing reply: ‘We had a green light from Washington.'"
He lists dozens of Israeli crimes: from punitive demolitions of palestinian homes, to mass arrests of palestinians, the destruction of thousands of ancient olive trees, the frequent closure of palestinian schools and universities leaving students on the streets or at home for long periods, the interception and confiscation by Israel of foreign aid from Arab countries, even funds sent by the American government for humanitarian purposes; and, above all, the accelerated seizure and settlement of Arab land. He has no hesitation in describing Israel’s ‘security wall’ built on palestinian land on the West Bank, as an ‘"imprisonment wall." The palestinian economy, he writes, has been "forced back into the pre-industrial age."
He relates how on March 29, 2002, one day after the 22 nations of the Arab League endorsed a Saudi plan offering Israel normal relations if it withdrew to its 1967 borders, "a massive Israeli military force surrounded and destroyed Yasir Arafat’s office compound in Ramallah, leaving only a few rooms intact… Except for one brief interlude, Arafat was to be permanently confined to this small space until the final days of his life."
There are, however, some cheerful moments in his narrative as when, on a visit to Arafat and his wife Suha in Gaza, their baby daughter, "dressed in a beautiful pink suit, came readily to sit on my lap." He describes his liking for Sadat: "Of almost a hundred heads of state with whom I met while president, he was my favourite and my closest personal friend" -- and his hours of often heated debate with the Syrian leader Hafiz al-Asad.
On the eve of the palestinian elections of January 2006, won by Hamas, Carter met Hamas leaders and urged them to forgo violence. Among these leaders was Mahmoud al-Zahar, whose house was last week struck by rocketp-ropelled grenades fired by Fatah supporters -- only the latest episode in a suicidal intrap-alestinian war.
Carter’s message is stark: The only option that "can ultimately be acceptable as a basis for peace" is a "withdrawal by Israel to the 1967 border as specified in UN Resolution 242 and as promised in the Camp David Accords and the Oslo Agreement and prescribed in the Roadmap of the International Quartet."
If Carter were in the White House today, peace might have a chance. But he is not.
patrick Seale is a leading British writer on the Middle East, and the author of The Struggle for Syria; also, Asad of Syria: The Struggle for the Middle East; and Abu Nidal: A Gun for Hire.
. One hopes that this chapter (and the concluding "Summary"
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