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Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid
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Amazon.com Review
The crowning achievement of Jimmy Carter's presidency was the Camp David Accords between Israel and Egypt, and he has continued his public and private diplomacy ever since, winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for his decades of work for peace, human rights, and international development. He has been a tireless author since then as well, writing bestselling books on his childhood, his faith, and American history and politics, but in Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, he has returned to the Middle East and to the question of Israel's peace with its neighbors--in particular, how Israeli sovereignty and security can coexist permanently and peacefully with Palestinian nationhood.
It's a rare honor to ask questions of a former president, and we are grateful that President Carter was able to take the time in between his work with his wife, Rosalynn, for the Carter Center and Habitat for Humanity and his many writing projects to speak with us about his hopes for the region and his thoughts on the book.
A big thank you to President Carter for granting our request for an interview. An Interview with President Jimmy Carter
Q: What has been the importance of your own faith in your continued interest in peace in the Middle East?
A: As a Christian, I worship the Prince of Peace. One of my preeminent commitments has been to bring peace to the people who live in the Holy Land. I made my best efforts as president and still have this as a high priority.
Q: A common theme in your years of Middle East diplomacy has been that leaders on both sides have often been more open to discussion and change in private than in public. Do you think that's still the case?
A: Yes. This is why private and intense negotiations can be successful. More accurately, however, my premise has been that the general public (Jewish, Christian, and Muslim) are more eager for peace than their political leaders. For instance, a recent poll done by the Hebrew University in Jerusalem showed that 58% of Israelis and 81% of the Palestinians favor a comprehensive settlement similar to the Roadmap for Peace or the Saudi proposal adopted by all 23 Arab nations and recently promoted by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Tragically, there have been no substantive peace talks during the past six years.
Q: How have the war in Iraq and the increased strength of Iran (and the declarations of their leaders against Israel) changed the conditions of the Israel-Palestine question?
A: Other existing or threatened conflicts in the region greatly increase the importance of Israel's having peace agreements with its neighbors, to minimize overall Arab animosity toward both Israel and the United States and reduce the threat of a broader conflict.
Q: Your use of the term "apartheid" has been a lightning rod in the response to your book. Could you explain your choice? Were you surprised by the reaction?
A: The book is about Palestine, the occupied territories, and not about Israel. Forced segregation in the West Bank and terrible oppression of the Palestinians create a situation accurately described by the word. I made it plain in the text that this abuse is not based on racism, but on the desire of a minority of Israelis to confiscate and colonize Palestinian land. This violates the basic humanitarian premises on which the nation of Israel was founded. My surprise is that most critics of the book have ignored the facts about Palestinian persecution and its proposals for future peace and resorted to personal attacks on the author. No one could visit the occupied territories and deny that the book is accurate.
Q: You write in the book that "the peace process does not have a life of its own; it is not self-sustaining." What would you recommend that the next American president do to revive it?
A: I would not want to wait two more years. It is encouraging that President George W. Bush has announced that peace in the Holy Land will be a high priority for his administration during the next two years. On her January trip to the region, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has called for early U.S.-Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. She has recommended the 2002 offer of the Arab nations as a foundation for peace: full recognition of Israel based on a return to its internationally recognized borders. This offer is compatible with official U.S. Government policy, previous agreements approved by Israeli governments in 1978 and 1993, and with the International Quartet's "roadmap for peace." My book proposes that, through negotiated land swaps, this "green line" border be modified to permit a substantial number of Israelis settlers to remain in Palestine. With strong U.S. pressure, backed by the U.N., Russia, and the European Community, Israelis and Palestinians would have to come to the negotiating table.
1/18/2007
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13/01/2007
For a people that have experienced so much persecution, it seems improper to criticize Israel's actions. Jimmy Carter has highlighted uncomfortable issues for American Jews (I am also one) to address. It was an important step forward that a well respected personality such as Carter wrote this book. Israel's 'realpolitik' towards the Palestinians is morally unsupportable. Terror has many tactics; it can come from government policies & tanks as well as suicide bombers.
My view is that it is time for American Jews to take the 'blue' pill, wake up and see the reality as it is, not what they wanted or were told it is. It's not a comfortable process to put into question assumptions that were taught since childhood. But blind devotion to a state is dangerous.
As we have seen with the Iraq war, a hard-right government can do things that its people realize is wrong. As is happening now in the US, we need to speak out in favor of a dramatic new course for Israel that may improve the chances for peace. It is high time that American Jews stop giving Israel (their hard-right gov't) a blank check of support irrespective of their actions and begin to treat Israel as the separate state that it is. The extreme right is the enemy of all peace loving people.
28/11/2006
[...]
The constant attempts to denigrate Carter's Presidency (as though the long lines at that shrine to American privilege, the gas pump, and our foreign presence preceding the Iranian hostage crisis were of the President's making and, moreover, of greater consequence than the Iraq debacle) are belied once again justifications, lest he risk mirroring the very narrow, self-serving interests he seeks to confront and redress through proposals based on negotiated peace, mutual respect, shared rights and, above all, on genuine human and religious (including Judeo-Christian) values.
The negative reactions to the book, I'm afraid, prove its importance. Many Americans remained "passively" approving of the Iraq war--despite not just its blatant imperialist aggressiveness but its sheer irrationality and absurdity--because of the perception that somehow America's "holy war," with its pageantry of "shock and awe," was in the interests of Israel. Although Carter's warnings, criticisms, and prescriptions in "Palestine Peace Not Apartheid" require as much of the Palestinians as the Israelis, the criticisms he has received come from narrow, defensive Americans who are incapable of rising to anything resembling an impartial, broad-based understanding of the "human community"--of the "family of man," as it was once called.
This is not a particularly hard-hitting account (its author is, after all, an ingenuous man of peace and good will). So the mean-spirited "hits" the book has been taking should in themselves be seen as a wake-up call--not just to Israelis and Palestinians but to Americans of every religion, ethnicity, class, and political stripe. If we "can't get along together," and if we can't model for the world a tradition-blind, color-blind melting pot instead of viewing that metallic vessel as a grenade, we can hardly pretend to be surprised the next time it blows up in our faces.
28/11/2006
I have just finished Jimmy's Carter's new book Palestine, Peace not Apartheid. It documents the truth about the Israeli expropriation of Palestine and brutalization of the Palestinian people. This is not new to anyone who has been paying attention and has the moral consciousness to care. What is unique about this book is its perspective. The story is told from the personal and naive view of a devote Christian, who has witnessed first hand the events and been a part of them. All the same facts are there, confiscations, jailing, group punishment, economic strangulation, systematic colonization, extraordinary PR, expulsions, killing, land theft, water theft, religious fanaticism, gradual take over of the whole country, etc., but the tone leaves the conclusions implicit, though inescapable. So if you want a measured gentle view of the theft of a country and expulsion of its people, this is your book.
Of course, the pro-Israel Lobby will not agree, as is evident from some of the other reviews.
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 Palestine in a Transnational Context Ahmad H.Sa’Di, Amahl Bishara, Heribert Adam, Joel Beinin, Salah M.Hassan, Samera Esmeir, Vincent Lloyd, Zia Mian |
 To Assure Pride and Confidence in the Electoral Process: Report of the National Commission on Federal Election Reform Jimmy Carter, Gerald R. Ford, Lloyd N. Cutler, Robert H. Michel |
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