by Jimmy Carter
Simon & Schuster, 320 pp., November 2006, 978-0743285025

Review by Muhammad Idrees Ahmad, January 25, 2007

Jimmy Carter, the 39th President of the United States is no stranger to controversy. As the first American President to speak of a Palestinian “homeland”, to encourage Israel to give up occupied lands, to force Israel from captured territory[1], to establish contacts with the PLO, it was inevitable that Carter should draw the wrath of the Israel lobby. Menachem Began and Ed Koch – the Prime Minister of Israel and Mayor or New York respectively — were soon exposed plotting Carter’s defeat in the upcoming presidential elections.[2] Andrew Young, the UN Ambassador who met Arafat and a longtime friend of the President’s, was made to resign, and Carter lost his reelection, receiving only 48 percent of the Jewish vote.

Despite his departure from public office, Carter’s engagement in the region continued in the form of peacemaking initiatives and election monitoring through the Carter Center. The Center monitored last year's elections in the Occupied Palestinian Territories that brought Hamas to power; Carter’s certification of the election's fairness, and his subsequent encouragement for the US and Israel to engage in dialogue with the elected Palestinian government got a cold reception in the implacably rejectionist US-Israeli camp. 

Faced with these disappointments, Carter has embarked on a new project — to appeal directly to the people of the United States and Israel.

A prolific writer, Carter has penned more than twenty books, including poetry and fiction, on subjects ranging from politics, religion, history to ethics. Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, his latest, is perhaps the most controversial — not because of anything he says, but rather because of who he is. Since leaving office, Carter’s name has become synonymous with human rights, peace making and democracy promotion (before the term was stripped of its meaning by the Reaganites and neo-Reaganites); the facts in the book may not be new or controversial, but Carter’s name carries prestige and credibility that threatens to bring the facts to a mass audience, hitherto denied the unadulterated truth. The fact that the book is topping Best Seller lists, despite the carefully orchestrated campaigns to defame Carter and discredit his book, may explain why the Israel lobby is so concerned.

With plenty of interesting anecdotes and details from nearly three decades of involvement in the region’s politics, Carter’s book is highly readable. While the history of the conflict may not be Carter’s purpose or forte, it is the sections of the book dealing with the present situation in Palestine that bear notice. Here Carter is forthright and graphic in his depiction of the daily humiliations and oppression meted out to the Palestinians by Israel’s brutal Apartheid regime. The use of the South African analogy is deliberate, as Carter seeks to spark a debate by using a word with an ugly historical resonance. A proof of its effectiveness is the sheer venom directed at Carter by the Israel lobby and its minions in the congress and media.

There is hardly anything novel about Carter’s use of the Apartheid analogy; many in Israel itself, including its former Minister of Education, Shulamit Aloni, its preeminent Human Rights organization, B’Tselem have used the word, while outside, a figure no less than Bishop Desmond Tutu has likened Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians to how Apartheid South Africa treated its Blacks. But in the United States, where Israel has heretofore escaped criticism, this analogy is hitting raw nerve; for the main argument in Israel’s defense has always been that the historical suffering endured by Jews – the persecution, the discrimination — entitles them to special exemption. The Jewish State itself shown to be implementing a system of Apartheid — a vile form of institutionalized racial discrimination — could easily cost it the special exemption.

The glimpse that Carter presents of Palestinian life under occupation makes for harrowing reading. A matrix of control that includes checkpoints, Jewish-only roads and the Wall corrals Palestinians into smaller and smaller ghettoes as Israel’s  march towards the completion of its land grab continues unimpeded. Water and agricultural resources are confiscated, olive groves destroyed — all in the continuing shadow of house demolitions, closures and curfews.

The population of Gaza, more than half which is less than fifteen years of age, is “being strangled since the Israeli ‘withdrawal’”, Carter says, with Israel retaining control of its land, sea and air exits. With police, teachers, nurses, and social workers deprived of salaries the poverty rate has reached 70 percent and acute malnutrition is at a record high with ”more than half of Palestinian families eating only one meal a day”. (p.176)

Carter points out that “more than 630,000 Palestinians…have been detained at some time by the Israelis” since ‘67 including many women and children. Children aged twelve to fourteen “can be sentenced for a period of up to six months, and after the age of fourteen Palestinian children are tried as adults, a violation of international law”. (pp.196-7)

Carter dismisses the “security” rationale for what he calls Israel’s “imprisonment Wall”,

The wall ravages many places along its devious route that are important to Christians. In addition to enclosing Bethlehem in one of its most notable intrusions, an especially heartbreaking division is on the southern slope of the Mount of Olives, a favorite place for Jesus and his disciples, and very near Bethany, where they often visited Mary, Martha, and their brother, Lazarus. There is a church named for one of the sisters, Santa Marta Monastery, where Israel’s thirty-foot concrete wall cuts through the property. The house of worship is now on the Jerusalem side, and its parishioners are separated from it because they cannot get permits to enter Jerusalem. Its priest, Father Claudio Ghilardi, says, “For nine hundred years we have lived here under Turkish, British, Jordanian, and Israeli governments, and no one has ever stopped people coming to pray. It is scandalous. This is not about a barrier. It is a border…The Wall is not separating Palestinians from Jews; rather Palestinians from Palestinians.” …The 2,000 Palestinian Christians have lost their place of worship and their spiritual center. (pp.194-5)

Carter also exposes the history of Israeli rejectionism sustained by unswerving US support which has preculded any possibility of a just peace; more than forty US vetoes have provided Israel special immunity from censure at the United Nations, even as the whole world, with the exception of the United States, is unanimous in its condemnation of Israeli brutalities. Carter also dispatches the popular myth of Barak’s “generous offer” at Camp David — popularized, amongst others, by Clinton’s envoy and former (and present) Israel lobbyist Dennis Ross. As Carter reveals, once one looks at the details of the offer, it doesn’t appear generous at all. In fact,

There was no possibility that any Palestinian leader could accept such terms and survive, but official statements from Washington and Jerusalem were successful in placing the entire onus for the failure on Yasir Arafat.

Contrary to the popular myth, Carter states, the Palestinian have always been willing to negotiate. From Oslo, Camp David, to Bush’s Roadmap, the Palestinians have made major concessions which went unreciprocated by Israel, even as it keeps insisting it does not have a partner for Peace. It will come as a surprise to Carter’s audience that Hamas, as he reveals, has honoured an 18 month unilateral ceasefire even as Israeli attacks go on unabated. The Palestinian Prime Minister, Ismail Haniyeh, Carter writes, has already accepted the ”prisoners document”, a proposal for a peaceful settlement with broad support amongst the Palestinians.  

Where Carter fails, however, is in insisting that the label applies to the Occupied Territories only; perhaps in an effort to mollify critics, he insists Israel within its own borders is a “vibrant democracy” with “equal voting rights” for all. If voting rights were all that mattered, then Carter’s claims would be valid, but people don’t live to vote. There are more immediate needs, such as shelter, health, community, and the citizenship that ensures these rights. The Arab citizens of Israel, through various legal and informal means, are denied the same health, education and economic opportunities available to its Jewish citizens. Unlike Apartheid South Africa, where 87% of the land was off limits to its non-White citizens, in Israel nearly 93% of the land is unavailable for lease or purchase to its Arab citizens through a sophisticated sytem of Basic Laws and quasi-governmental institutions like Jewish National Fund. There are nearly 350 unrecognized villages with an Arab population exceeding 150,000 and various Bedouin villages have been demolished altogether. One Israeli law prohibits a Palestinian citizen of Israel to bring a spouse to live with him in Israel from anywhere in the world, except from the Occupied Territories. In short, the system that obtains within Israel’s borders can be described as anything but a “vibrant democracy” for its Arab citizens.

The book, to be sure, has some inaccuracies, but none of these impinge on the main thesis of the book. For instance, in the historical overview we are told that Israel launched the ’82 invasion ”in response to terrorist attacks” (p.7).  In reality, there were no attacks against Israel in the preceding year; Israel, according to the analyst Avner Yaniv, launched the assault to avert PLO’s “peace offensive”. Carter also suggests the United States has acted as an honest broker until recently (p. 16). With the exception of rare initiatives by Carter and James Baker, in fact, the United States, since 1962, has alone sustained Israel’s continued rejectionism. Carter states Israel appeared “vulnerable to punishing Arab attacks” until ‘67 (p.22). This is a curious statement, as Israel had already invaded and occupied Egyptian territory in ‘56 and its border raids against its neighbours had continued unabated since its creation (see Israel’s Border Wars, by Benny Morris). Carter refers to Yitzhak Rabin as one of the “heroes” of the ‘67 war (p.22). In fact, Rabin suffered a nervous breakdown and his participation in the war was minimal. In another place Carter blames Palestinians for the “single-mindedness amounting to tunnel vision” with which they see “the restoration of their rights, defined by international law, as the key to peace throughout the broader Middle East, including the Gulf states” (p.187). Israel’s latest assault on Gaza, we are told, came as  a response to the capture of an Israeli soldier by Palestinian militants (p.197). To his credit, Carter in his media appearances has expounded on the context and the reason for the Palestinian operation — to secure the release of the nearly 9200 civilians, including a 100 women and 293 children.

The shortcomings, nevertheless, are minor compared to the great service Carter has rendered. He is the first President of the United States to dare speak the unvarnished truth about Palestine; and his opinions carry the weight and credibility of his achievements. He has ensured that the issue receive a national platform as a corrective to the “powerful political, economic and religious forces in the United States” which ensure that “Israeli government decisions are rarely questioned or condemned”. “[V]oices from Jerusalem dominate in our media” he maintains.(p.209) He has since braved the vituperative – and always vicious — assaults of these powerful forces without giving an inch. For this, Carter — “the only American president approaching sainthood”, in Fisk’s words — deserves unreserved support and respect. [3]

Muhammad Idrees Ahmad is a researcher at Spinwatch. His regular commentaries appear on The Fanonite

– References –

[1] In the wake of “Operation Litani”  — Israeli invaded Lebanon during which it killed 2,000 civilians — Carter demanded Israel withdraw from the captured territory, in accord with UN resolutions. When Israel delayed, Carter threatened to cut all aid within 24 hours, forcing a hasty Israeli retreat.  

[2] The plot was uncovered in an NSA evesdropping operation. Earlier, Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, had similarly exposed the secret meeting between Andrew Young and Arafat through a wiretap.

[3] Under pressure from the Israel Lobby, Amazon.com recently put a hatchetjob by an Israeli military veteran, Jeffrey Goldberg, in the space reserved for editorial reviews. A petition campaign that gathered more than 18,000 signatures within a matter of days soon brought Amazon to heel, and the defamatory review was withdrawn.

– Acknowledgement –

Some of the important quotes from Carter’s book were already extracted by Norman G. Finkelstein in his review, which I have reproduced here.