Below is the report from the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America illustrating Carter's mistakes, followed by Carter's piece from the Washington Post.
~JDS
www.CAMERA.org
He's Back - Washington Post prints Carter's latest error-filled Op-Ed
Jimmy Carter's latest newspaper commentary, "Stop the Band-Aid Treatment; We Need Policies for a Real, Lasting Middle East Peace" (Washington Post, August 1) features repeated errors of fact. It echoes his "Israel's new plan: A land grab" ( USA Today, May 16) and March 20 and March 17 commentaries in The Guardian (U.K.) and Ha'aretz, respectively. Only Carter's "celebrity" status as an ex-president can account for their publication.
Mistakes
1) Carter claims "incremental unilateral withdrawals" by Israel would leave Palestinian Arabs with "their remnant territories reduced to little more than human dumping grounds ...." In fact, if Israel, having already left the Gaza Strip, withdraws inside the planned route of its West Bank security barrier, the Arabs would retain 100 percent of the Strip and 92 percent of Judea and Samaria - about what the United States, Europeans, Egyptians and Saudis criticized the Palestinian Authority for rejecting when it was offered at Camp David in 2000.
2) Carter alleges that the security barrier is "provocative" and "fails to bring safety or stability." In truth, the barrier has contributed to a dramatic drop in "successful" terrorist attacks from the West Bank, provokes mostly those - including Hamas (Islamic Resistance Movement), Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades of Fatah - who'd rather Israel didn't defend itself effectively. It contributes directly to the stability of Israel and (by undercutting radical Palestinian groups) of Jordan and indirectly to stability for West Bank Arabs.
3) He refers, as in his USA Today screed, to "Israel's official pre-1967 borders ...." Israel's pre-'67 West Bank boundary was not an "official border" but the temporary 1949 armistice lines. Israel had offered to make them official, but the Arab states refused so as not to imply recognition of Israel's legitimacy in any borders. The need for permanent borders was acknowledged in U.N. Security Council Resolution 242 (1967), which does not call for Israeli withdrawal from all the land gained in the Six-Day War but rather new, "secure and recognized boundaries ...." Carter, challenged on this point after his USA Today commentary, claimed - contrary to the diplomatic record - that this was a subjective "difference of opinion."
4) The ex-president declares that "Israel should withdraw from all Lebanese territory, including Shebaa Farms ...." The United Nations confirmed in June, 2000 that Israel had withdrawn from all Lebanese territory. U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan declared Lebanon's claim to the area as "not valid." U.N. Security Council Resolution 1583 (2005), among other things, reiterated that Israel's withdrawal from Lebanese territory was complete. In April, 2006, the United Nations noted that Shebaa Farms was part of the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights, taken from Syria, not Lebanon. The United Nations implicitly recognized that Hezbollah used the claim that Shebaa Farms was "Israeli-occupied Lebanon" as a pretext to continue "armed resistance."
5) Carter claims "Israel belatedly announced, but did not carry out, a two-day cessation in bombing Lebanon ...." This is pure misrepresentation. Israel announced, and implemented as far as possible, a bombing halt to permit civilians to flee battle zones and to allow easier entry for humanitarian aid shipments, but said it would continue air support for ground attacks against Hezbollah, as well as to stop an imminent attack from Hezbollah.
6) Carter charges that "there will be no substantive and permanent peace for any peoples in this troubled region as long as Israel is violating key U.N. resolutions, official American policy and the international 'road map' for peace by occupying Arab lands and oppressing the Palestinians." Whew, so it really is all Israel's fault - at least, according to Carter. There's Holocaust revisionism and Middle East revisionism, and Carter wallows in the latter.
But Israel doesn't oppress the Palestinian Arabs (the standard of living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip grew markedly from 1967 until the first intifada in 1987, and again after the 1993 start of the Oslo process until the second intifada in 2000); it's been seeking to separate from them, yet they follow it with suicide bombs and rockets; Israel has reiterated its readiness to implement the "road map" - just as soon as the Palestinians fulfill their requirement to begin to halt terrorism.
7) Carter claims that "leaders on both sides ignore strong majorities that crave peace, allowing extremist-led violence to preempt all opportunities for building a political consensus." Here he tars Israel with the Arabs' brush. Israeli majorities supported their leaders attempts to negotiate peace, including at the Madrid conference in 1991, in the Oslo process after 1993, and attempts to reach peace unilaterally, including the 2005 withdrawal from Gaza and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's 2006 campaign pledge to begin withdrawing from much of the West Bank. The extremism - rejectionism - has come from the Arab side, and includes the Palestinians' election of Hamas to a legislative majority last January. There is no solid evidence of a Palestinian Arab majority for a West Bank and Gaza Strip state, at peace with Israel as a Jewish state, without a so-called "right of return" for millions of Arabs to Israel rather than their new Palestinian state.
Stop the Band-Aid Treatment
We Need Policies for a Real, Lasting Middle East Peace
By Jimmy Carter
The Washington Post
Tuesday, August 1, 2006; A17
The Middle East is a tinderbox, with some key players on all sides waiting for every opportunity to destroy their enemies with bullets, bombs and missiles. One of the special vulnerabilities of Israel, and a repetitive cause of violence, is the holding of prisoners. Militant Palestinians and Lebanese know that a captured Israeli soldier or civilian is either a cause of conflict or a valuable bargaining chip for prisoner exchange. This assumption is based on a number of such trades, including 1,150 Arabs, mostly Palestinians, for three Israeli soldiers in 1985; 123 Lebanese for the remains of two Israeli soldiers in 1996; and 433 Palestinians and others for an Israeli businessman and the bodies of three soldiers in 2004.
This stratagem precipitated the renewed violence that erupted in June when Palestinians dug a tunnel under the barrier that surrounds Gaza and assaulted some Israeli soldiers, killing two and capturing one. They offered to exchange the soldier for the release of 95 women and 313 children who are among almost 10,000 Arabs in Israeli prisons, but this time Israel rejected a swap and attacked Gaza in an attempt to free the soldier and stop rocket fire into Israel. The resulting destruction brought reconciliation between warring Palestinian factions and support for them throughout the Arab world.
Hezbollah militants then killed three Israeli soldiers and captured two others, and insisted on Israel's withdrawal from disputed territory and an exchange for some of the several thousand incarcerated Lebanese. With American backing, Israeli bombs and missiles rained down on Lebanon. Hezbollah rockets from Syria and Iran struck northern Israel.
It is inarguable that Israel has a right to defend itself against attacks on its citizens, but it is inhumane and counterproductive to punish civilian populations in the illogical hope that somehow they will blame Hamas and Hezbollah for provoking the devastating response. The result instead has been that broad Arab and worldwide support has been rallied for these groups, while condemnation of both Israel and the United States has intensified.
Israel belatedly announced, but did not carry out, a two-day cessation in bombing Lebanon, responding to the global condemnation of an air attack on the Lebanese village of Qana, where 57 civilians were killed this past weekend and where 106 died from the same cause 10 years ago. As before there were expressions of "deep regret," a promise of "immediate investigation" and the explanation that dropped leaflets had warned families in the region to leave their homes. The urgent need in Lebanon is that Israeli attacks stop, the nation's regular military forces control the southern region, Hezbollah cease as a separate fighting force, and future attacks against Israel be prevented. Israel should withdraw from all Lebanese territory, including Shebaa Farms, and release the Lebanese prisoners. Yet yesterday, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert rejected a cease-fire.
These are ambitious hopes, but even if the U.N. Security Council adopts and implements a resolution that would lead to such an eventual solution, it will provide just another band-aid and temporary relief. Tragically, the current conflict is part of the inevitably repetitive cycle of violence that results from the absence of a comprehensive settlement in the Middle East, exacerbated by the almost unprecedented six-year absence of any real effort to achieve such a goal.
Leaders on both sides ignore strong majorities that crave peace, allowing extremist-led violence to preempt all opportunities for building a political consensus. Traumatized Israelis cling to the false hope that their lives will be made safer by incremental unilateral withdrawals from occupied areas, while Palestinians see their remnant territories reduced to little more than human dumping grounds surrounded by a provocative "security barrier" that embarrasses Israel's friends and that fails to bring safety or stability.
The general parameters of a long-term, two-state agreement are well known. There will be no substantive and permanent peace for any peoples in this troubled region as long as Israel is violating key U.N. resolutions, official American policy and the international "road map" for peace by occupying Arab lands and oppressing the Palestinians. Except for mutually agreeable negotiated modifications, Israel's official pre-1967 borders must be honored. As were all previous administrations since the founding of Israel, U.S. government leaders must be in the forefront of achieving this long-delayed goal.
A major impediment to progress is Washington's strange policy that dialogue on controversial issues will be extended only as a reward for subservient behavior and will be withheld from those who reject U.S. assertions. Direct engagement with the Palestine Liberation Organization or the Palestinian Authority and the government in Damascus will be necessary if secure negotiated settlements are to be achieved. Failure to address the issues and leaders involved risks the creation of an arc of even greater instability running from Jerusalem through Beirut, Damascus, Baghdad and Tehran.
The people of the Middle East deserve peace and justice, and we in the international community owe them our strong leadership and support.
Former president Carter is the founder of the nonprofit Carter Center in Atlanta.
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