Review of President Jimmy Carter’s new book, Palestine: Peace not apartheid

Palestine: Peace not apartheid, Jimmy Carter, Simon & Shuster, 2006, 264 pages in hard back at $45.

While the leaders of Israel and Palestine have finally met for the first time in more than 6 years, many people may wonder whether there is now a glimmer of hope for peace in the Middle East and why it has taken them so long to talk to one another.

For anybody interested in this prospect and this question, they will find many answers in President Jimmy Carter’s remarkable new book about Palestine. It has been widely criticized in America by parts of the pro-Israel lobby groups but most people will find it  fascinating, interesting, useful and an insightful and highly readable history of this protracted and troublesome land dispute.

President Carter brings with him over 30 years of deep personal involvement in peace making efforts from his first visit to Israel in 1973 before he became President, the Camp David Accords in 1978 that he orchestrated during his Presidency and his involvement through the Carter Centre in democratic elections held by the Palestinians in the years since then especially the most recent ones in 2005 and 2006.

By far the most interesting contribution the book has made is the benefit of his personal meetings with all the key players on both sides of the dispute for the last 30 years and his recollections of the influences each of them had behind the peace agreement with Egypt in 1979, the Oslo Agreement in 1993 and the Arab Peace Proposal in 2002. They are all included as appendices in the book along with the key United Nations resolutions such as No. 242 in 1967, No. 338 in 1973 and No 465 in 1980.

He talks about his fondness for some of the leaders of Israel that he has known for more than 3 decades and for both his wife’s and his own personal interest in the biblical history of the holy land and the sites he has been able to visit over the years.

Carter is a strong supporter of the Geneva Initiative launched in 2003 by a number of independent leaders in Israel and Palestine as an unofficial peace agreement which lays the basis of a “reasonable and mutually acceptable permanent agreement” for a two state solution to the dispute.

He is very critical of Israel’s continuing expansion of settlements on Palestinian land occupied since the 1967 war which the UN resolutions still require them to relinquish. He is also very critical of the path of Israel’s wall which effectively will emprison the Palestinians, deprive them of their rights and is built on occupied land deep inside the 1967 border. The book contains useful maps to clearly understand the extent of this deliberate policy of ongoing land encroachment.

The election win by Hamas earlier this year, is seen as a natural response of the Palestinians to the unwillingness of the government of Israel to negotiate with the more moderate President Mahmoud Abbas. The invasion of Lebanon is described as a continuation of the cycle of violence which has led to the loss of so many innocent lives on both sides but of course in much larger numbers of Arabs. The book also contains a catalogue of the injustices suffered by the Palestinians under occupation.

Of course he also points out how self-destructive has been the use of violence by the Palestinians particularly the manner in which suicide bombers were allowed to inflict their deadly missions by former President Yasser Arafat.

But the strongest chapter is the final summary, where he discusses the two major obstacles to permanent peace in the Middle East – Israel’s confiscation and colonialisation of Palestinian land and the suicide bombers sent in response to their subjugation and persecution.

He concludes that the key requirements for revitilsation of the peace process, which the US government has allowed to be abandoned, are as follows:

a. The security of Israel must be guaranteed behind secure and recognized borders by both the Palestinian government and it’s neigbbours.

b. The internal debate within Israel must be resolved in order to define Israel’s permanent legal boundary taking into account UN resolution 242.

c. The sovereignty of all Middle East nations and the sanctity of international borders must be honoured by Israel’s leaders who have contravened international law on many occasions over the last 25 years.

Despite the difficulties in getting the warring parties to the negotiation table, President Carter is hopeful that it can be done due largely to the huge support from the majority of the people of both Israel and Palestine that want peace. As he says, “the remaining differences and their potential resolution are clearly defined. Both Israel and the Arab countries have endorsed the crucial and unavoidable UN resolutions”.

He concludes, “The United States is squandering international prestige and goodwill and intensifying global anti-American terrorism by unofficially condoning or abetting the Israeli confiscation and colonialization of Palestinian territories.” It will indeed by a tragedy for everybody in the region and beyond if peace is not allowed to prevail.

Imran Price is Deputy Director General of the Centre for Contemporary Islamic Studies in Singapore.