Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid

This is an informative book on the Palestinian situation. Just the historical chronology, the related maps on different dates, and the Appendices including the text of U.N. Resolutions provide excellent reference material.Carter's "land for peace" premise is straightforward as expressed on page 17. He believes the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will be resolved when: 1) Palestinians and other Arab countries will fully recognize Israel; 2) Violence and terrorism against civilians in Israel will abate; and 3) Palestinians will live in peace and dignity in their own land. He repeats those conditions in the concluding Summary. Within it he also specifies that Israel has to explicitly recognize its borders before 1967 as it had agreed within U.N. Resolution 242. Carter also states that the chronic obstacle to those conditions for peace is the belief by many Israelis that "they have the right to confiscate ...Palestinian land and try to justify the ... persecution of ... hopeless... Palestinians." "Some Palestinians react by honoring suicide bombers as martyrs... and consider the killing of Israelis as victories." Carter also adds that a major obstacle to peace has been the U.S. passivity towards the issue and its unconditional supportive bias towards Israel no matter what its behavior. As he states: "because of powerful political, economic, and religious forces in the U.S., Israeli government decisions are rarely questioned." There are many books on this subject, including The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy and The Power of Israel in the United States.Carter notes that "most American citizens are unaware of circumstances in the occupied territories." His purpose is to educate the American public to the plight of the Palestinians. He wants to trigger a domestic debate to foster understanding that should allow America to facilitate permanent peace in the region. America has to be perceived as a fair mediator by the Arab world. Carter hopes the info he imparts will get us to reach a fairer assessment.Since his Presidency in 1977, Carter's life as a peace waging diplomat has been closely intertwined with the contemporary history of the Middle East and the Israel-Palestinian conflict in particular. Carter's first hand narrative of the Camp David Accords in 1978 that he brokered between Sadat (Egypt) and Begin (Israel) is fascinating as described in chapter 3. He has known the majority of the current and previous generation of Middle Eastern leaders on a first name basis. He shares such firsthand accounts within chapters 4 and 5 including these leaders' detailed perspective on the conflict. In the next few chapters, he analyzes all four succeeding White House Administrations handling of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Unlike former Presidents, he remains engaged at every step by facilitating diplomatic meetings, attending political conferences, monitoring elections, implementing humanitarian projects through his Carter Center while maintaining his contacts with Middle Eastern leaders.Carter having observed the treatment of Palestinians firsthand thinks it fits the definition of apartheid precisely (separation of people from their homeland). In chapter 16 "The Wall of Prison" he is alarmed at how the Israelis built this huge wall around the West Bank encroaching and seizing Palestinian lands (see map pg. 191) separating some Palestinians from their own families and agricultural lands. He feels that the Israelis have imprisoned Palestinians.Currently, there are books by established political scientists suggesting that despair and poverty are not the root of terrorism such as What Makes a Terrorist: Economics and the Roots of Terrorism (Lionel Robbins Lectures). In some cases, I may be inclined to agree. But, not here. The Palestinians lack of any human rights, comfort, and peace of mind combined with chronic Israeli land grab and military provocations leave them with little recourse but to lash out violently. Carter repeatedly denounces terrorism. But, he recognizes what triggers it.This book is controversial as Jewish scholars accused Carter of being wrong on many counts. They compiled their rebuttals in a book: Bearing False Witness: Jimmy Carter's Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. But, the latter stronger assertion is that Carter misinterpreted the key U.N. resolution 242, where the authors believe Carter falsely claimed that Israel had been required to cede the lands acquired in 1967. But, U.N. resolution 242 written in 1967 states " (i) Withdrawal of Israel armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict [1967 6-day-war]." Carter is right. Additionally, Carter practices full disclosure by publishing the literal text of key UN. Resolutions and peace accords. So, you can check the wording for yourself. I double checked the veracity of those texts that are accessible on line, and they all paned out.Carter is the only Western leader who had contacts with Hamas that now runs the Palestinian government. His narratives suggest they are more moderate than the Media conveys. For visiting Hamas, Carter has been ostracized for collaborating with terrorists. But, as a result of his undertaking dialogue with Hamas they seem more open to peace negotiations than the Israelis are.In the conclusion, Carter derives hope for peace by observing that polls of both Israelis and Palestinians show a majority of the population favoring a two-State solution as a condition for peace. But, the chronic refusal of Israel's political leadership to honor the terms of U.N. Resolution 242 represents an obstacle to peace in the region.Anyone who is emotionally detached from this issue will recognize this is a rare document of history. L. Carl Brown with Foreign Affairs gave this book an excellent review. Also, Jimmy Carter Man from Plains is an interesting documentary on his U.S. book tour.

If only Americans could begin with a tabula rasa, our mental slates wiped clean of the clutter of propaganda that we have absorbed from our news media, we could read Jimmy Carter's "Palestine Peace Not Apartheid" and finally understand the source of the problem in the Middle East: Israel's relentless theft of Palestinian land, and its collective punishment of the entire population. If only. Alas, most supporters of Israel will not read this book (but that won't prevent them from posting one-star reviews on Amazon).President Carter, of course, is more diplomatic in discussing the history of the conflict, preferring words like "confiscation" instead of "theft." While he mentions the destruction of 420 Palestinian villages in the war of 1948, Carter doesn't mention what Shlomo Ben-Ami, a former Foreign Minister of Israel, called "the atrocities and massacres it [the Israeli army] perpetrated against the civilian Arab community."Nonetheless, Carter's Palestine is an amazingly succinct and compelling account of the conflict, especially the events since his election in 1976. Particularly fascinating are his accounts of conversations with Arab leaders such as Yasir Arafat, Hafez al-Assad (Syria), Anwar Sadat (Egypt), and King Hussein (Jordan), which allow the reader to see the conflict from the Arab leaders' perspectives. President Assad's interpretation of the conflict, on pages 72-80, presents the most concise version I have seen of the other side of the story, the side rarely seen in the United States. Readers who desire a more detailed and scholarly history should consider "Palestine and the Arab-Israeli Conflict" by Charles Smith, or "The Gun and the Olive Branch", by David Hirst.While many Americans will be shocked by Carter's declarations about Israel's deplorable treatment of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, I can personally attest to many of the facts. Carter writes, "In addition to punitive demolitions, Israel had razed even more Palestinian homes in `clearing' operations, plus houses that Israel claimed were built without a permit." While visiting the West Bank last year, I saw the Israeli military bulldoze three Palestinian homes because of the planned construction of what President Carter calls - in the most accurate description I have seen - the "imprisonment wall". Euphemistically termed the "security barrier" by a compliant American press, the wall is used to imprison Palestinians in bantustans that are separated from the rest of Palestine and often from their own land. Palestinians in Bethlehem, surrounded by the wall, cannot travel the five miles to Jerusalem, while foreigners like me visit from 5,000 miles away.According to Carter, international rights organizations estimate that 20 percent of the Palestinian population has been imprisoned at some time by the Israelis. My taxi driver, a Christian Palestinian, said that he was imprisoned at age 16 for throwing stones, a symbolic act of protest during the first intifada. A year later, Israeli soldiers broke his arm after stopping him and finding out that he had been in prison.Israel's ethnic cleansing of Christians and Muslims from Jerusalem is camouflaged in a blanket of legalese such as "building permits" and "identification cards." The Palestinian Christian who cleaned my room at the hotel had been imprisoned for working in Jerusalem "without a Jerusalem ID." Though his wife and children were born in Jerusalem, he grew up in a small nearby town where there are no jobs. At the time of his arrest, on the day his third child was born, he was working in the Christian quarter of the Old City, which is in Occupied Territory.This important book solidifies Jimmy Carter's standing as the most honest and forthright statesman of our time. While he feels he did the right thing in settling for a separate peace treaty between Egypt and Israel, rather than a comprehensive agreement that included the Palestinians, he presents Assad's opposing view that Sadat betrayed the Arabs. Carter admits that his biggest mistake at Camp David was "failure to clarify in writing Begin's verbal promise" to cease building settlements in the Occupied Territories. Begin soon broke that promise.Although most of the facts presented by Carter are readily verifiable, I wish that he had presented footnotes for the source of some specific details. For example, on page 206 he states that 708 Palestinian children and 123 Israeli children were killed between September 2000 and March 2006. However, B'tselem, the respected Israeli human rights group, reports that Israeli security forces killed 801 Palestinian children, while Palestinians killed 39 Israeli minors from 9/29/2000 to 11/15/2006.I also wish that Carter had included some photographs in the book. The photograph on the front cover, depicting a peaceful protest at the three-story high imprisonment wall, says more than any description can accomplish. Israeli police routinely attack and disperse with tear gas such demonstrations at the wall, beating and arresting protestors. According to a witness at one demonstration, organized as non-violent, a protestor began throwing stones. When a leader of the protest tried to stop it, he was arrested -- by the stone-thrower, who was an undercover Israeli policeman."Palestine" is a short book of facts, devoid of sermonizing and analysis, easily digestible in a few hours. The book merely relates what happened in the recent past and what is happening now - facts that are only controversial because they haven't been reported by the mainstream news media. The facts lead to the obvious conclusions that Carter makes on the final page: "Peace will come to Israel and the Middle East only when Israel is willing to comply with international law," and the United States is encouraging anti-American terrorism by "condoning or abetting the Israeli confiscation and colonization of Palestinian territories."Jimmy Carter's "Palestine Peace Not Apartheid" gives me optimism that more people will learn the truth. If only people will read it.