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Debate
Essential To Arab-Israeli Peace
By Amy Goodman
09/14/07 "Seattle
Post-Intelligencer"
--- - I sat down with former President Carter last week at
the Carter Center in Atlanta. The center was hosting a
conference of human-rights defenders, people at the front lines
confronting repressive regimes around the globe. After a
quarter-century of humanitarian work through the Carter Center,
monitoring elections, working to eradicate neglected tropical
diseases and focusing on the poor, Jimmy Carter now finds
himself at the center of the storm in the Israel-Palestine
conflict.
After more than three decades of work on the Middle East, Carter
released a book titled “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.” The
book’s title alone has created a furor. But Carter is
undeterred:
“The word ‘apartheid’ is exactly accurate. This is an area
that’s occupied by two powers. They are now completely
separated. Palestinians can’t even ride on the same roads that
the Israelis have created or built in Palestinian territory. The
Israelis never see a Palestinian, except the Israeli soldiers.
The Palestinians never see an Israeli, except at a distance,
except the Israeli soldiers. So within Palestinian territory,
they are absolutely and totally separated, much worse than they
were in South Africa, by the way. And the other thing is, the
other definition of ‘apartheid’ is, one side dominates the
other. And the Israelis completely dominate the life of the
Palestinian people.”
Carter lays much of the blame for the lack of momentum toward a
solution on the absence of debate in the U.S.: “It’s a terrible
human-rights persecution that far transcends what any outsider
would imagine. And there are powerful political forces in
America that prevent any objective analysis of the problem in
the Holy Land. I think it’s accurate to say that not a single
member of Congress with whom I’m familiar would possibly speak
out and call for Israel to withdraw to their legal boundaries or
to publicize the plight of the Palestinians or even to call
publicly and repeatedly for good faith peace talks.”
As president, Carter brokered the 1978 Camp David Peace Accords,
creating a lasting peace between Israel and Egypt. President
Clinton, who officiated over the failed 2000 Camp David Summit
between Israel and the Palestinians, has been highly critical of
Carter’s perspective. Clinton blames the Palestinian leadership
for rejecting Israel’s “generous offer.” It’s interesting that
Israel’s chief negotiator, former Foreign Minister Shlomo
Ben-Ami, told me in 2006, “If I were a Palestinian, I would have
rejected Camp David as well.”
While we were in Atlanta, DePaul University in Chicago reached a
settlement with professor Norman Finkelstein. Despite hailing
him as a “prolific scholar and an outstanding teacher,” DePaul
denied him tenure, many believe because of his outspoken
criticism of Israeli policy toward Palestinians. The son of
Holocaust survivors himself, Finkelstein has been praised by
leading scholars.
Just months before he died, Raul Hilberg, revered founder of the
field of Holocaust studies, praised Finkelstein’s work: “That
takes a great amount of courage. His place in the whole history
of writing history is assured and that those who in the end are
proven right triumph, and he will be among those who will have
triumphed, albeit, it so seems, at great cost.”
Open debate on Israel-Palestine should not come at such a high
cost. It is essential to Middle East peace. The Iraq Study
Group, in its bipartisan Baker-Hamilton Report, stated, “The
United States will not be able to achieve its goals in the
Middle East unless the United States deals directly with the
Arab-Israeli conflict.”
Carter’s book cover has a picture of the “Separation Barrier.”
Israel originally designed the wall to run along the
internationally recognized 1967 border. Carter noted that Israel
decided to “move the wall from the Israeli border to intrude
deeply within Palestine to carve out some of that precious land
for the Israeli settlers to occupy.” The International Court of
Justice has ruled it illegal. It is more than half completed,
with plans to snake more than 400 miles, mainly through the West
Bank. In places the wall is more than 25 feet high and made of
concrete.
Carter describes it as “much worse” than the Berlin Wall. Elder
Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery writes:
“When my friends fall prey to despair, I show them a piece of
painted concrete, which I bought in Berlin. It is one of the
remnants of the Berlin Wall, which are on sale in the city. I
tell them that I intend, when the time comes, to apply for a
franchise to sell pieces of the Separation Wall.”
That barrier stands in the United States as well —
metaphorically — around any kind of rational debate for a fair
and just solution in the Middle East. My suggestion: Tear down
that wall.
Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily
international TV/radio news hour airing on 500 stations in North
America.
© 2007 Amy Goodman; distributed
by King Features Syndicate
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