Carter’s Delusions of Peace!

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter is one of the well-known American presidents involved in the Arab-Israeli conflict. This is because he was the president who signed the peace accord between Egypt and Israel, alongside former president Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin. Jimmy Carter also wrote the book, “Palestine: Peace not Apartheid”; he also has established the Carter Center. And it is Jimmy Carter who traveled to the Middle East last December, a few days before the beginning of the aggressions against Gaza. He met with new U.S. President Barack Obama when he was still the President-elect just prior to traveling. Carter told him that he was on his way to the Middle East in the hopes of meeting with the Lebanese who are planning to hold elections in June (which will most likely be monitored by the Carter Center). He was also going to visit Syria and had hoped to meet with the leadership of Hamas, as well as others. Obama asked Carter to send him a report upon Carter’s return, which is what he did. He met the President-elect for an intense discussion on the eve of the meeting of the famous five at the Oval Office, and Carter says that Obama listened to him and did not interrupt as he told him all that the Carter Center had been doing. Most of the interview was related to questions on the Middle East.

All of these things that President Carter did highlighted the special importance which surrounds the Arab-Israeli conflict and the American understanding of it, but also forces us to ask questions about what we see happening, because we find that they are far from the truth in regards to this conflict.

Stemming from what is written in Carter’s latest book, “We Can Realize Peace in the Holy Land Now: A Plan Might Work,” this question grows when he says that he wrote the book because President Obama is faced with the great opportunity and responsibility of guiding the conflict between Israel and its neighbors to its end, that that time is at hand and that peace is possible. Writer Amy Goodman, of the program “Democracy Now,” went over points of contention with him regarding the book, or what I would call his illusions of peace.

Carter says that his plan is the opposite of the direction that Israel is currently taking in the West Bank, which is to establish one state with one people of any path from the Mediterranean to the River Jordan. The road map is from the nation and comes from the decisions of a united people. The Arab initiative, which is agreed upon by all of the Arab nations, is the standing two-state solution based on Israel withdrawing to the 1967 borders, the sharing of Jerusalem and the like. And all of this was expressed quite a long time ago.

Carter says that his plans regarding foreign affairs, which he includes in his book, would be operational to develop a basic two-state solution that an overwhelming majority of the two-sides would accept. The first of these amendments is to remove roughly half of the Israeli settlers from Palestinian land living among them, those who are closest to Jerusalem and exchange the equivalent amount of land acre for acre (fidan for fidan). This will be used in the narrow strip of land (roughly 35 miles wide) which can be used as a roadway under the control of Israeli security. President Carter says that when he discussed this plan with Sharon on January 2005, Sharon agreed to it completely.

First of all, I cannot imagine how someone like President Carter can even accept an unfair solution like that, and how he can neglect what the Arabic Initiative required regarding the right to return. Is President Carter deluded? How is it possible that President Carter imagined that Sharon was prepared to agree to it? Or was all of this an attempt to stall any kind of implementation, as has happened in every agreement with Israel, from the very first truce signed in 1948 to cease fire agreements to the Peace Accord with Egypt, which was signed by President Carter himself, and even with the Oslo Accord signed by Arafat, which went on for 15 years without finding any way to be implemented. Arafat was even assassinated for signing it.

In response to a question about the recent aggression in Gaza, President Carter said that Hamas simply wants to have an open supply line, sufficient food, water and fuel supplies to give to the one and a half million Palestinians who are basically imprisoned within Gaza, and all that Israel wants is an end to the missiles and the mortars that Hamas was firing. He adds that both of these requirements can be achieved.

Carter said recently that Hamas has rescinded their demands for lifting the embargo, ending the occupation and returning refugees as an ultimate goal, and are now negotiating in good faith for a near-term goal: the release of prisoners in the Gaza Strip and to restore the flow of supplies. It seems as if Carter is ignorant of the Israeli request to expel Palestinians from within the Green Line, and from the region west of the River Jordan, in general, and that is very thorny proposition indeed.

President Jimmy Carter has said that he does not believe that there is a chance that the International Criminal Tribunal will impose any sanctions on Israel for crimes committed in the Palestinian territories, and he is not even convinced that a trial of the leaders of Israel, if it ever happened, would be fruitful. Rather, he is sure that such a step would be a mistake. And in spite of that, he hopes to fully discover whether these crimes happened or not, and the reason for the cover-up. Carter thinks that the disaster which occurred to one and a half million people in Gaza may potentially generate a reactionary force that will particularly emanate from the new president in White House, in addition to a representative and a high-level negotiator. And he thinks that this initiative will ultimately lead to a peace agreement.

This obvious fallacy here appears to be that President Carter does not dare encourage a trial of Israeli leadership and he imagines that the recent events in Gaza might lead to peace!

Let’s ask the question one more time: If President Carter had come to the region and met with leaders in Lebanon, Palestine and Damascus, as well as the Hamas leadership, and if he left with the results he claims, then was it official and how were these results reached? And if this is even imaginable, what will happen when other Americans who do not have the same kinds of privileges as President Carter seek to mediate in the Middle East?!?