Jimmy Carter: America Can Persuade Israel to Make a Just Peace

The New York Times ^ | 04/21/2002 | JIMMY CARTER

[Pokey78]

ATLANTA — In January 1996, with full support from Israel and responding to the invitation of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, the Carter Center helped to monitor a democratic election in the West Bank and Gaza, which was well organized, open and fair. In that election, 88 members were elected to the Palestinian National Authority, with Yasir Arafat as president. Legally and practically, the Palestinian people were encouraged to form their own government, with the expectation that they would soon have full sovereignty as a state.

When the election was over, I made a strong effort to persuade the leaders of Hamas to accept the election results, with Mr. Arafat as their leader. I relayed a message offering them full participation in the process of developing a permanent constitutional framework for the new political entity, but they refused to accept this proposal. Despite this rejection, it was a time of peace and hope, and there was no threat of violence or even peaceful demonstrations. The legal status of the Palestinian people has not changed since then, but their plight has grown desperate.

Ariel Sharon is a strong and forceful man and has never equivocated in his public declarations nor deviated from his ultimate purpose. His rejection of all peace agreements that included Israeli withdrawal from Arab lands, his invasion of Lebanon, his provocative visit to the Temple Mount, the destruction of villages and homes, the arrests of thousands of Palestinians and his open defiance of President George W. Bush's demand that he comply with international law have all been orchestrated to accomplish his ultimate goals: to establish Israeli settlements as widely as possible throughout occupied territories and to deny Palestinians a cohesive political existence.

There is adequate blame on the other side. Even when he was free and enjoying the full trappings of political power, Yasir Arafat never exerted control over Hamas and other radical Palestinians who reject the concept of a peaceful Israeli existence and adopt any means to accomplish their goal. Mr. Arafat's all-too-rare denunciations of violence have been spasmodic, often expressed only in English and likely insincere. He may well see the suicide attacks as one of the few ways to retaliate against his tormentors, to dramatize the suffering of his people, or as a means for him, vicariously, to be a martyr.

Tragically, the policies of Mr. Sharon have greatly strengthened these criminal elements, enhanced their popular support, and encouraged misguided young men and women to sacrifice their own lives in attacking innocent Israeli citizens. The abhorrent suicide bombings are also counterproductive in that they discredit the Palestinian cause, help perpetuate the military occupation and destruction of villages, and obstruct efforts toward peace and justice.
 
The situation is not hopeless. There is an ultimate avenue to peace in the implementation of United Nations resolutions, including Resolution 242, expressed most recently in the highly publicized proposal of Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Abdullah. The basic premises of these resolutions are withdrawal of Israelis from Palestinian lands in exchange for full acceptance of Israel and Israel's right to live in peace. This is a reasonable solution for many Israelis, having been accepted in 1978 by Prime Minister Menachem Begin and ratified by the Israeli Knesset. Egypt, offering the greatest threat to Israel, responded by establishing full diplomatic relations and honoring Israeli rights, including unimpeded use of the Suez canal. This set a pattern for what can and must be done by all other Arab nations. Through constructive negotiations, both sides can consider some modifications of the 1967 boundary lines.

East Jerusalem can be jointly administered with unimpeded access to holy places, and the right of return can be addressed by permitting a limited number of displaced Palestinians to return to their homeland with fair compensation to others. It will be a good investment for the international community to pay this cost.

With the ready and potentially unanimous backing of the international community, the United States government can bring about such a solution to the existing imbroglio. Demands on both sides should be so patently fair and balanced that at least a majority of citizens in the affected area will respond with approval, and an international force can monitor compliance with agreed peace terms, as was approved for the Sinai region in 1979 following Israel's withdrawal from Egyptian territory.

There are two existing factors that offer success to United States persuasion. One is the legal requirement that American weapons are to be used by Israel only for defensive purposes, a premise certainly being violated in the recent destruction of Jenin and other villages. Richard Nixon imposed this requirement to stop Ariel Sharon and Israel's military advance into Egypt in the 1973 war, and I used the same demand to deter Israeli attacks on Lebanon in 1979. (A full invasion was launched by Ariel Sharon after I left office). The other persuasive factor is approximately $10 million daily in American aid to Israel. President George Bush Sr. threatened this assistance in 1992 to prevent the building of Israeli settlements between Jerusalem and Bethlehem.

I understand the extreme political sensitivity in America of using persuasion on the Israelis, but it is important to remember that none of the actions toward peace would involve an encroachment on the sovereign territory of Israel. They all involve lands of the Egyptians, Lebanese and Palestinians, as recognized by international law.

The existing situation is tragic and likely to get worse. Normal diplomatic efforts have failed. It is time for the United States, as the sole recognized intermediary, to consider more forceful action for peace. The rest of the world will welcome this leadership.

Jimmy Carter, the former president, is chairman of the Carter Center, which works worldwide to advance peace and human health.

[KQQL]

MR FAILURE shut up

[Khepera]

Man I missed it. I like to hear them scream when they are banned.

[supercat]

If the Pallies require "protection," it is mainly against their own stupidity and murderous blood-lust and irrational hatred of Jews. Such protection MIGHT just come from Jordan or Egypt, as long as the USA had a big gun pointed at the head of either, safety off, cocked locked and loaded. Otherwise those nations would just conspire with the Pallies to kill more Jews.

The real enemies of the Palestinians are those who support the terrorist attacks against Israel. The Palestinians gain nothing from the attacks and lose much, but the attacks work out to the benefit of othe Arab nations who hold the Palestinians in almost as much contempt as the Israelis.

The real key to peace in the region will be for Israel to somehow show Palestine who its real enemies are.

[Torie]

Well he was just expressing his opinion within reasonable decorous parameters, and was a good punching bag. He quite livened up the conversation, none of which was beyond the pale. He should not have been banned.

[CrossCheck]

On a brighter note, Jimmuh did wonders for the cardigan sweater industry.

[Rome2000]

Carter is just another leftist fellow traveler who was a complete FAILURE when it came to dealing with the soon to be extinct "islamic" subhuman heretical cannon fodder.

The ultimate outcome is easy to see if one has the courage to say it out loud.

Islam will never be allowed to posess weapons of mass destruction.

THEY ARE NOT INVITED to the club.

A bright flash followed by a light holier than "allah" will be the raghead legacy.

[LarryLied]

"Israeli support for Islamic extremists, as an opposition force to the secular pro-PLO movement, eventually blew up in Israel's face. Hamas, for example, which was born out of the Moslem Brotherhood with Israeli encouragement

Whadda you know...

[PhilDragoo]

There is adequate blame on the other side

To distill a single phrase to represent the monumental asininity of this man on this topic, one might as well select this one which embodies his moral equivalence.

Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount was the most transparent of pretexts for Arafat's prearranged intifada.

Far from "failing to control Hamas" and the like, Sharon has now proven Arafat to be the president of terrorism, the chairman of homicide bombers.

Barak's unprecedented concessions and Arafat's summary rejection are the coffin for the Carter Doctrine.

This is the man who was terrified by a rabbit.

This is the "leader" who appeased North Korea, surrendered Iran, gave away the Panama Canal, betrayed Taiwan, embraced Communist China and Communist Cuba.

This is the "leader" who when faced with challenges demonstrated to America how to put on a sweater and lament a malaise.

Applying the Carter Doctrine to the World Trade Center and Pentagon and Flight 93 attacks of September 11, 2001, we should be sending Carter to hold elections among the Al Qaeda, and arrange a peace process with Osama bin Laden.

It is entirely consistent for the New York Times to give this anacephalic a forum.

Its motto and Carter's: "All is skewed to fit our bent"

[Paleo Conservative]

No current Freeper by that name.

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

He quite livened up the conversation, none of which was beyond the pale. He should not have been banned.

Based on what he posted on this thread, I agree. I also can easily believe that he posted something more objectionable elsewhere though. Since none of his posts here were pulled, he may have really gone to town on another thread. I guess we will never know for sure.

[UB355]

Got to read this one tomorrow

[Torie]

This was his only other post on another thread that is still with us:

"Lies and distortions from the left? BS! Jeb sucks up to and runs the state for millionaire retirees moving there. (Except in the panhandle, where he gives lip service to typical concervative concerns). Do not trust Jeb Bush!"

Apparently, he is not very fond of the Bush family. But then many Freepers still with us are not. Of course, they are all to the right of Bush, except Tuco, who hangs in there. Maybe that is the clue. Don't bash Bush from the left (except from the Buchanan perspective). Is that it?

[BluesDuke]

As if anything Jimmy Carter says about foreign affairs should be taken seriously?

Saint Jimmy's Halo Askew

Jimmy Carter may not have been earliest in perceiving that President Clinton's foreign policy is a vacuum, but he has been fastest in filling it with himself.

For 14 years come November, he has been carrying the smile that proclaims his wound through incessant voyages in pursuit of a cure. He has wandered as any pilgrim must when he has no clear idea of the shrine he seeks except that it is built for him.

For awhile he floated about as an international statesman whose only portfolio was a heart eager for office temp employment as an ambassador from Saddam Hussein or Kim Il Sung.

At points in his pilgrimage Carter made a singularly useful private citizen; and his career would never again have known a blotch if he could curb his lust to be a public man once more.

His opportunity to fall came his way last spring. The Clinton administration had puffed up the peril of North Korea's nuclear potential rather beyond need and too far beyond this president's taste for forcible action.

Jimmy Carter, private citizen, took wing to Pyongyang alighted to Kim Il Sung's courtesies, and emerged to describe him as "charming," Carter's favourite adjective for statesmen otherwise ill-famed. He was persuaded that Kim would be reasonable and agreeable and the president welcomed the assurance, since agreeability is his pole star. North Korea was thereafter consigned to the cemetery of forgotten menaces.

But Carter had marked Clinton as one of those men whose engagements with troublesome problems progress unvaryingly through stages of indecision to arrival at inanition. Carter could wait his time certain that his chance to seize his advantage was sure to come and so it did in Haiti.

Clinton had paltered so long that events had overtaken him. He had let himself slide toward having to do the last thing he had ever wanted to do. Then Jimmy Carter threw out a rope. Clinton was a swimmer in distress and what could he do but concede the lifeguard full play with the line?

And so Carter picked the mission to Gen. Raoul Cedras, who would not stoop to traffic with any creature so lowly as the president's national security adviser. Carter enjoyed himself awhile in his old role as a despot's short-term ambassador to Washington, dined with the Cedrases, and as ever found him charming and her even more so. He then accepted a deal more than implying amnesty for the whole catalog of crimes committed by the regime and the least of its servitors up to Oct. 15 next.

Having left Haiti's cops their licence to beat two demonstrators to death with presumable impunity on Tuesday, Carter returned in triumph to lecture the president in public for having mistaken Cedras for a dictator.

This performance especially disturbs for an ignorance of three years of Haitian history shocking even in a former president of the United States. All the time he was tirelessly gadding about, he was too lazy to inform himself about a record whose monstrosities demand extremities of mercy for sparing their doers from hanging higher than Haman.

Yesterday's Times published a Carter interview with Maureen Dowd, a young woman as richly endowed in head as she is beguiling in manner and dangerous to meet when you walk on shaky ground. In its course, Carter remembered that, when the United Nations was debating its mobilisation against Saddam Hussein, he had undertaken to write the heads of state of the Security Council states and urge them not to go along with George Bush's wishes.

He described that action as "not appropriate, perhaps." One could well think of harsher appellations. What would have been appropriate would be raising his objections to his countrymen, which I cannot recall his doing with overmuch fervour. Instead he addressed private letters to foreign potentates in a design to rally them against his own government. Such is the pretentious effrontery inescapable for anyone who sets himself up to persuade the voters that they were wrong not to re-elect a saint.

- Murray Kempton, 1994.

[ffrancone]

You're joking, right?

[Rome2000]

Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount was the most transparent of pretexts for Arafat's prearranged intifada

The American left has chosen, as usual, to deny reality

[Torie]

What status is that? I have done my thing for sometime here, and am still here without a word of chatisement. It must be my good looks.

[DoughtyOne]

Once thing about Jimmy Carter, it's tough to believe he lives on the same planet inbetween surfacing to make an a-- out of himself all over again.

Jimmy is still trying to milk anything he can for a legacy.  When it comes to legacy building, Clinton is a piker compared Carter.  Carter refers to an election held in 1996.  Ah the democratic possibilities.  How many elections has Israel had since 1996.  Three?  More?  I may be mistaken, but haven't Netanyahu, Barak and Sharon held office since 1996.  When will Yasser allow elections again I wonder.  If this were Israel or the US, Carter would rightly be leading protests on the steps of the capital building demanding new elections.  But hey, why hold Arafat to any standards at all, right Jimmy?

Now, when it comes to standards, there's one guy that deserves standards to be applied fairly.  Right Jimmy?  I man Ariel Sharon is a forceful man.  After all, isn't it forceful to demand that suicide bombings stop?  Isn't it forceful to make small incursions into Palestinian territory to try to stop those suicide bombings?  And when they don't, isn't it forceful to launch a full military operation into Palestinian territory?  Some might mistakenly call this prudent.  Thank heaven Jimmy is here to the rescue.  Instead it's forceful.  It is Sharon who avoids peace at every turn.  And what was Barak doing in 2000 Jimmy?  Was it forceful of him to make a pretty good offer to Arafat then?

I guess there are bad deeds, and then there are bad deeds hugh Jimmy?  Listed right up there are the deeds of Sharon visiting the Temple Mount, and Yasser seeing the suicide attacks as one of the few ways to retaliate against his tormentors.  How dare that evil Sharon!

You state that the policies of Sharon have ussered in the murderous acts of bombings.  Yet you fail to mention that the latest round of violence had it's inception under Primie Minister Barak.  How does this compute Jimmy?  Did you mean to say the evil policies of Barak caused this, or are you just going further insane?

Jimmy, bud, do you really think right of return is ever going to fly?  Right now we've got people who've been waring with Israel for over half a century.  Now you want Israel to do all the giving?  Are you a reation thinking being?

<i>There are two existing factors that offer success to United States persuasion. One is the legal requirement that American weapons are to be used by Israel only for defensive purposes, a premise certainly being violated in the recent destruction of Jenin and other villages.</i> I guess Jimmy just arrived back from Neptune about three weeks ago.  He is unaware that Israel was acting preemptively, defensively by entering Jenin.

A mind is a terrible thing to waste.  In Carter's case we don't need to worry, there isn't one to be wasted.
 

[LadyForLiberty]

It is not Israel who needs to be forced into a just peace. The question we all must face is; who will FORCE the Palestinians into a JUST PEACE?

[xm177e2]

his open defiance of President George W. Bush's demand that he comply with international law

When was this???