In last Sunday's Washington Post, President Jimmy Carter reflects on the failure of the Middle East peace process. ‘The desire of leaders in Israel to occupy and colonize the land in the West Bank, that’s been the key problem.’ Jimmy Carter
"During the past 16 months I have visited the Middle East four times and met with leaders in Israel, Egypt, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, the West Bank and Gaza. I was in Damascus when President Obama made his historic speech in Cairo, which raised high hopes among the more-optimistic Israelis and Palestinians, who recognize that his insistence on a total freeze of settlement expansion is the key to any acceptable peace agreement or any positive responses toward Israel from Arab nations.
Late last month I traveled to the region with a group of "Elders," including Archbishop Desmond Tutu, former presidents Fernando Henrique Cardoso of Brazil and Mary Robinson of Ireland, former prime minister Gro Brundtland of Norway and women's activist Ela Bhatt of India. Three of us had previously visited Gaza, which is now a walled-in ghetto inhabited by 1.6 million Palestinians, 1.1 million of whom are refugees from Israel and the West Bank and receive basic humanitarian assistance from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. Israel prevents any cement, lumber, seeds, fertilizer and hundreds of other needed materials from entering through Gaza's gates. Some additional goods from Egypt reach Gaza through underground tunnels. Gazans cannot produce their own food nor repair schools, hospitals, business establishments or the 50,000 homes that were destroyed or heavily damaged by Israel's assault last January.
We found a growing sense of concern and despair among those who observe, as we did, that settlement expansion is continuing apace, rapidly encroaching into Palestinian villages, hilltops, grazing lands, farming areas and olive groves. There are more than 200 of these settlements in the West Bank.
An even more disturbing expansion is taking place in Palestinian East Jerusalem. Three months ago I visited a family who had lived for four generations in their small, recently condemned home. They were laboring to destroy it themselves to avoid much higher costs if Israeli contractors carried out the demolition order. On Aug. 27, we Elders took a gift of food to 18 members of the Hanoun family, recently evicted from their home of 65 years. The Hanouns, including six children, are living on the street, while Israeli settlers have moved into their confiscated dwelling.
Daily, headlines in Jerusalem newspapers say that certain areas and types of construction would be excluded from the settlement freeze and that it would, at best, have a limited duration. Increasingly desperate Palestinians see little prospect of their plight being alleviated; political, business and academic leaders are making contingency plans should President Obama's efforts fail.
We saw considerable interest in a call by Javier Solana, secretary general of the Council of the European Union, for the United Nations to endorse the two-state solution, which already has the firm commitment of the U.S. government and the other members of the "Quartet" (Russia and the United Nations). Solana proposes that the United Nations recognize the pre-1967 border between Israel and Palestine, and deal with the fate of Palestinian refugees and how Jerusalem would be shared. Palestine would become a full U.N. member and enjoy diplomatic relations with other nations, many of which would be eager to respond. Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad described to us his unilateral plan for Palestine to become an independent state.
A more likely alternative to the present debacle is one state, which is obviously the goal of Israeli leaders who insist on colonizing the West Bank and East Jerusalem. A majority of the Palestinian leaders with whom we met are seriously considering acceptance of one state, between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. By renouncing the dream of an independent Palestine, they would become fellow citizens with their Jewish neighbors and then demand equal rights within a democracy. In this nonviolent civil rights struggle, their examples would be Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela.
They are aware of demographic trends. Non-Jews are already a slight majority of total citizens in this area, and within a few years Arabs will constitute a clear majority.
A two-state solution is clearly preferable and has been embraced at the grass roots.
Just south of Jerusalem, the Palestinian residents of Wadi Fukin and the nearby Israeli villagers of Tzur Hadassah are working together closely to protect their small shared valley from the ravages of rock spill, sewage and further loss of land from a huge settlement on the cliff above, where 26,000 Israelis are rapidly expanding their confiscated area. It was heartwarming to see the international harmony with which the villagers face common challenges and opportunities.
There are 25 similar cross-border partnerships between Israelis and their Palestinian neighbors. The best alternative for the future is a negotiated peace agreement, so that the example of Wadi Fukin and Tzur Hadassah can prevail along a peaceful border between two sovereign nations.
The writer was the 39th president. He founded The Carter Center, a nongovernmental organization focused on global peace and health issues.
Philip Weiss offers the following commentary:
It looks like the realists are growing weary. The venerable Landrum Bolling has produced a new video, New Hope for Peace: What America Must Do To End The Israel-Palestine Conflict, that looks aimed directly at the Obama White House. In it Bolling interviews Jimmy Carter, James Baker, Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski, all of whom offer their advice for the current Obama efforts. There seems to be tinge of concern that the administration isn’t willing to do what needs to be done. Scrowcroft says we have to change the way we have been doing things, while Brzezinski says frustration is widespread. Jimmy Carter takes the cake with the quote that became the title of this post. The message is clear – the US needs to speak clearly about Israel and apply pressure to change conditions on the ground.
All speakers agree that things will not move forward without US leadership. Most specifically they point towards opening dialog with Hamas in the belief that everyone has to be at the table. Does this video represent a sign of despiration that Obama is getting weak in the knees? Not sure, but I’d feel better if one of these old hands were whispering in Obama’s ear on the subject and not Dennis Ross.
Weiss adds the following update today on "Jimmy Carter and One-State".
- Scripting Jimmy Carter
- Jimmy Carter Calls Israel’s Plans a “Land-Grab”
- Hark, Obama: ‘For the last 30 years the most important issue of my life has been peace in the holy land’ (Jimmy Carter)
- George Mitchell briefed by– Jimmy Carter
- More on Jimmy Carter and one-state
Landrum Bolling, the filmmaker and educator, sent the following email to John Whitbeck yesterday in the wake of Jimmy Carter’s Washington Post piece suggesting that the two-state solution has lost its meaning. Bolling permitted me to publish it:
I just had a good phone conversation with President Carter. He is unflappable, unintimidated by the attack from Elliott Abrams. He agrees that there is no indication that the Israeli leadership has any interest whatsoever in a viable Palestine as part of a Two State deal. He says that, contrary to his original hope and expectations, Begin within a few months after Camp David gave clear evidence that his intention was to retain all of the West Bank.
I am not sure what we who have a strong interest in a fair and peaceful settlement of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict can or should do. But of one thing I am certain: we must try to convince our government and the public that we must stop deluding ourselves about negotiating with the Israelis on a settlement freeze and on the adoption of the Two State Solution. The Israelis would be quite willing, though grudgingly, to enter into negotiations, endless negotiations, over a "settlement freeze". (It’s not something we should be pushing. That’s a sheer diversion.) The Israelis love "the peace process". They kept it going for forty years, and they’d gladly keep it going for another forty years. The just don’t want a decent, workable, fair just PEACE. It’s time we stopped playing that game. It’s futile– and basically dishonest.
