Making peace often involves talking to unsavoury people, so Jimmy Carter should be praised for engaging with Hamas
Ian Williams
Guardian, Comment is Free
April 25, 2008 6:00 PM | Printable version
It is odd that while Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon benefited from post-presidential canonisation, even the Democratic contenders keep a discrete leper's leap away from Jimmy Carter.
Carter's belief that even the most evil dictators will see the light is a testament to his Christian faith in redemption. It can be exasperating if you do not share his principles, but it is certainly preferable to the predestinarianism and damnation that informs other, less Christian evangelicals. Indeed, many probably find his Southern accent and piety a trifle over-unctuous. However, it is certainly not enough to explain his ostracism, which is almost entirely caused by his views on the Middle East.
Condoleezza Rice, representing the administration that brought the world the Iraq debacle and has earned the lowest-ever standing at home and abroad (in particular in the Middle East), saw fit to lecture him for talking to Hamas despite state department instructions. Carter denied getting any such warnings, but who are you going to believe: the most mendacious administration in history or the ex-president who wears his principles on his sleeve?
In any sane polity, there would be profound respect for the views of a president who engineered the only durable Arab-Israeli peace deal at Camp David, one that has now lasted over 30 years. Of course, meeting Hamas is considered very bad. Elected they may have been, but democracy has its limits in this brave new world where the label "terrorist" has more pungency and even less discrimination than Joe McCarthy's "communist". Indeed, Israel's ambassador to the UN, Dan Gillerman, called Carter a "bigot" yesterday. Can you imagine the reaction if a US envoy to Israel - or a presidential candidate - had used that term about several Israeli ex-prime ministers who truly deserve it?
On the other hand, perhaps we should remember that Carter's triumph at Camp David involved him dealing with Menachem Begin, the former leader of a group that had negotiated with Hitler's emissaries; assassinated Lord Moyne, the chief allied emissary in the region; massacred Arab civilians at Deir Yasseen; and blown up Jews, Brits and Arabs with equal-opportunity ruthlessness at the King David Hotel. Peace often involves talking to unsavoury people.
The other accusation against Carter was that he used the term "apartheid" in passing when talking about the settlements. No matter that Israeli commentators have also used the term, nor that those who should know - South Africans like Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu - have also done so, leaving their global halos undimmed. Carter did not even mention the extensive Israeli collaboration with the apartheid regime, on nuclear weapons, fighter planes and less bellicose forms of sanctions evasion or indeed the occupation's quantitative leap beyond the old South African regime - racially segregated roads.
Carter brought back indications that the Hamas leadership were prepared to buy into the only peace plan that has the support of considerable numbers of Israelis and of Arabs, a two-state solution based on the 1967 boundaries. Immediately, the usual suspects rushed to rubbish this. Hamas must not only recognise the reality of Israel's existence, but its "right" to exist. It is like asking American Indian tribes to accept the morality of manifest destiny before they could run their own reservations.
Interestingly, no one has asked Israeli government ministers to accept unequivocally the Palestinian state that has been promised for so long by the rest of the world. However, reciprocation apart, no one should doubt that those who condemn Carter, dismiss the Hamas offer and refuse to talk to them do not want peace.
There can be no peace unless the substantial proportion of Palestinians represented by Hamas sign on for it. There are significant elements in the Israeli government, like those who assassinate Hamas leaders every time a ceasefire is in the offing, who do not want any peace that restricts their activities in the West Bank.
Even as Rice bans talks to Hamas, the US continues to send cheques to a government that is building settlements in defiance of international law, its obligations under the so-called road map and its solemn promises to George Bush.
Carter deserves vociferous support for his well-meaning and well-informed efforts, not vilification and demonising. It was back-channel efforts like his that were responsible for any progress in the original Camp David and in Oslo. We should not be surprised that the Bush administration does not want to listen to Carter, but we should be very, very disappointed.
Showing posts with label jimmy carter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label jimmy carter. Show all posts
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Monday, January 29, 2007
Full Writing on the Wall
Here is the full text of my Guardian "Comment is Free" piece on Carter which I can now post here.
Writing on the wall
The manufactured row over Jimmy Carter's criticism of Israel risks obscuring a real chance for peace.
Ian Williams
January 26, 2007 04:01 PM
The fuss over Jimmy Carter and his new book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, gained new momentum this week as the former president spoke at Brandeis University, near Boston.
Carter's critics - of whom there are many - demanded that he use his speaking engagement to debate Alan Dershowitz, the prominent defender of torture and Israel. I look forward to similar demands that every time Dershowitz speaks, he give space to one of his opponents - Noam Chomsky, say, or Al Sharpton - and lets them counter his arguments.
Dershowitz, writing in the Jerusalem Post, claimed he just wanted "a real dialogue." But when overtly racist Israeli minister for strategic affairs, Avigdor Lieberman, who has advocated mass killings of Arabs, let alone apartheid, came to the US to speak at the Brookings Institute's Saban Center, did Dershowitz call for his remarks to be balanced by a riposte from a speaker from Peace Now, let alone Palestinian Envoy Afif Safieh?
This manufactured furor against Carter's book could not happen in any other country except the USA - and it has certainly not happened in Israel, where many clear-sighted Israelis would agree entirely with the book's message. More to the point, those with intimate experience of apartheid in South Africa, ranging from Archbishop Desmond Tutu in this space, to 200 prominent South African Jews in a letter last year, make much more explicit comparisons.
Carter has been called bigoted and anti-Semitic. In his book, however, he comes across as rather mealy-mouthed. In his speech at Brandeis he re-emphasized what he says in his book: that his warnings are against Apartheid to the territories, when the discrimination faced by Bedouin and Arab citizens in Israel on, for example land ownership, or access to social services, bears some very critical examination.
"I realize that this has caused great concern in the Jewish community," he said. "The title makes it clear that the book is about conditions and events in the Palestinian territories and not in Israel."
In fact, the word apartheid appears only three times in the entire text of his book - and always in the context of the Occupied Territories. The one time that he mentions it most explicitly, he is quoting an Israeli who feared that "we are moving towards a government like that of South Africa, with a dual society of Jewish rulers and Arab subjects with few rights of citizenship," in the context of describing future options for the Occupied Territories.
This is doubly interesting; because of course the Israeli press often makes the comparison with apartheid, since Israelis have to live with the consequences of their policies. It is only in the US that the legions of front-line fund-raiser banqueteers brandish their silverware in horror at the description.
Another time, Carter uses the word is in his description of the effect of the Separation Wall, "imposing a system of partial withdrawal, encapsulation, and apartheid on the Muslim and Christian citizens of the occupied territories." But he adds: "The driving force of the two peoples is unlike that in South Africa - not racism but the acquisition of land." This is somewhat inaccurate, since apartheid in South Africa involved massive confiscations of the best land and corralling the dispossessed into small areas.
His third use of the A-word is the most interesting. Rabin had just returned from the apartheid state, and described to Carter "the close relationship Israel had with South Africa in the diamond trade ... but commented that the South African system of apartheid could not long survive."
Israel's sanctions-busting trade with the racist state helped it to survive longer than it would otherwise have done. And Israeli collaboration on arms programs may have gone beyond missiles and planes as far a joint nuclear test, with a pariah regime whose antecedents were Nazi sympathizers. If apartheid is such dreadful concept that we can't use it about Israeli polices, where were Carter's critics when Israel was the mainstay of the apartheid regime in South Africa?
I cannot recall that one of the shrill denouncers of President Carter's book ever taking exception to this conspiracy. Did one of them ever protest Israeli support for South Africa, or the hobnobbing of Israeli leaders with men who had been interned as Nazi sympathizers during the second world war? In contrast, the State Department told Carter not to talk to Hamas during his visits.
Apartheid is both understandable and abhorrent; it is the truth of the analogy that hurts. Clearly, the row about Carter's use of the word is a cynically contrived effort to detract from the book's plain and irrefutable message, accepted by the whole world community and much of Israel, and indeed by many American Jews: that the road to peace involves implementation of the UN resolutions, and a return to the 1967 borders, with some adjustments mutually agreed.
Dershowitz himself admits this, but still looks for straws to beat at Carter. After Brandeis he depicted one sentence, which Carter himself admits was sloppily phrased, as an endorsement of suicide bombing. Carter wrote that the Arabs "make it clear that they will end the suicide bombings and other acts of terrorism when international laws and the ultimate goals of the Roadmap for Peace are accepted by Israel." Dershowitz knows that Carter does not support terrorism. This is a manifestation of an intellectual pogrom of the most distasteful kind.
As the engineer of the most successful peace agreement in the region - the settlement between Egypt and Israel, for which he was vilified for decades across the Arab world - Carter's claim that obstruction from expansionists in Israel, and their friends in the US, is the main obstacle to a peace has particular authority.
That, of course, is why the settlers and their American supporters would prefer you not to read his book or hear from him. Still, we should push the comparison further: the architects of South Africa's apartheid saw the writing on the wall, and came to a settlement before it was too late. It has left their country the most successful and prosperous on the continent.
We already have the wall; Carter has now provided some of the writing. Will Israel have the courage to follow his advice? jimmy carter apartheid south africa israel united states alan dershowitz
Writing on the wall
The manufactured row over Jimmy Carter's criticism of Israel risks obscuring a real chance for peace.
Ian Williams
January 26, 2007 04:01 PM
The fuss over Jimmy Carter and his new book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, gained new momentum this week as the former president spoke at Brandeis University, near Boston.
Carter's critics - of whom there are many - demanded that he use his speaking engagement to debate Alan Dershowitz, the prominent defender of torture and Israel. I look forward to similar demands that every time Dershowitz speaks, he give space to one of his opponents - Noam Chomsky, say, or Al Sharpton - and lets them counter his arguments.
Dershowitz, writing in the Jerusalem Post, claimed he just wanted "a real dialogue." But when overtly racist Israeli minister for strategic affairs, Avigdor Lieberman, who has advocated mass killings of Arabs, let alone apartheid, came to the US to speak at the Brookings Institute's Saban Center, did Dershowitz call for his remarks to be balanced by a riposte from a speaker from Peace Now, let alone Palestinian Envoy Afif Safieh?
This manufactured furor against Carter's book could not happen in any other country except the USA - and it has certainly not happened in Israel, where many clear-sighted Israelis would agree entirely with the book's message. More to the point, those with intimate experience of apartheid in South Africa, ranging from Archbishop Desmond Tutu in this space, to 200 prominent South African Jews in a letter last year, make much more explicit comparisons.
Carter has been called bigoted and anti-Semitic. In his book, however, he comes across as rather mealy-mouthed. In his speech at Brandeis he re-emphasized what he says in his book: that his warnings are against Apartheid to the territories, when the discrimination faced by Bedouin and Arab citizens in Israel on, for example land ownership, or access to social services, bears some very critical examination.
"I realize that this has caused great concern in the Jewish community," he said. "The title makes it clear that the book is about conditions and events in the Palestinian territories and not in Israel."
In fact, the word apartheid appears only three times in the entire text of his book - and always in the context of the Occupied Territories. The one time that he mentions it most explicitly, he is quoting an Israeli who feared that "we are moving towards a government like that of South Africa, with a dual society of Jewish rulers and Arab subjects with few rights of citizenship," in the context of describing future options for the Occupied Territories.
This is doubly interesting; because of course the Israeli press often makes the comparison with apartheid, since Israelis have to live with the consequences of their policies. It is only in the US that the legions of front-line fund-raiser banqueteers brandish their silverware in horror at the description.
Another time, Carter uses the word is in his description of the effect of the Separation Wall, "imposing a system of partial withdrawal, encapsulation, and apartheid on the Muslim and Christian citizens of the occupied territories." But he adds: "The driving force of the two peoples is unlike that in South Africa - not racism but the acquisition of land." This is somewhat inaccurate, since apartheid in South Africa involved massive confiscations of the best land and corralling the dispossessed into small areas.
His third use of the A-word is the most interesting. Rabin had just returned from the apartheid state, and described to Carter "the close relationship Israel had with South Africa in the diamond trade ... but commented that the South African system of apartheid could not long survive."
Israel's sanctions-busting trade with the racist state helped it to survive longer than it would otherwise have done. And Israeli collaboration on arms programs may have gone beyond missiles and planes as far a joint nuclear test, with a pariah regime whose antecedents were Nazi sympathizers. If apartheid is such dreadful concept that we can't use it about Israeli polices, where were Carter's critics when Israel was the mainstay of the apartheid regime in South Africa?
I cannot recall that one of the shrill denouncers of President Carter's book ever taking exception to this conspiracy. Did one of them ever protest Israeli support for South Africa, or the hobnobbing of Israeli leaders with men who had been interned as Nazi sympathizers during the second world war? In contrast, the State Department told Carter not to talk to Hamas during his visits.
Apartheid is both understandable and abhorrent; it is the truth of the analogy that hurts. Clearly, the row about Carter's use of the word is a cynically contrived effort to detract from the book's plain and irrefutable message, accepted by the whole world community and much of Israel, and indeed by many American Jews: that the road to peace involves implementation of the UN resolutions, and a return to the 1967 borders, with some adjustments mutually agreed.
Dershowitz himself admits this, but still looks for straws to beat at Carter. After Brandeis he depicted one sentence, which Carter himself admits was sloppily phrased, as an endorsement of suicide bombing. Carter wrote that the Arabs "make it clear that they will end the suicide bombings and other acts of terrorism when international laws and the ultimate goals of the Roadmap for Peace are accepted by Israel." Dershowitz knows that Carter does not support terrorism. This is a manifestation of an intellectual pogrom of the most distasteful kind.
As the engineer of the most successful peace agreement in the region - the settlement between Egypt and Israel, for which he was vilified for decades across the Arab world - Carter's claim that obstruction from expansionists in Israel, and their friends in the US, is the main obstacle to a peace has particular authority.
That, of course, is why the settlers and their American supporters would prefer you not to read his book or hear from him. Still, we should push the comparison further: the architects of South Africa's apartheid saw the writing on the wall, and came to a settlement before it was too late. It has left their country the most successful and prosperous on the continent.
We already have the wall; Carter has now provided some of the writing. Will Israel have the courage to follow his advice? jimmy carter apartheid south africa israel united states alan dershowitz
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