CAIRO — Former US president Jimmy Carter believes
there will be no genuine and durable peace for any peoples in the
volatile Middle East as long as Israel continues to violate UN
resolutions by occupying Arab lands.
"Traumatized Israelis cling to the false hope
that their lives will be made safer by incremental unilateral
withdrawals from occupied areas," Carter, a Nobel peace laureate,
wrote Tuesday, August 1, in an editorial in The Washington Post.
"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."
Israel is building a 700km-long Israeli separation
barrier, a mix of electronic fences and concrete walls, that will
eventually snake some 900 kilometers (540 miles) along the West Bank
and leave even larger swathes of its territory on the Israeli side.
Palestinians see the wall as nothing other than a
new land grab and an attempt to pre-empt the borders of their future
state.
Israel has spurned a landmark ruling by the
International Court of Justice and demand by the UN General Assembly
to tear down the barrier and compensate the Palestinians affected.
"Except for mutually agreeable negotiated
modifications, Israel's official pre-1967 borders must be
honored," stressed Carter.
"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."
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"…it is inhumane and
counterproductive to punish civilian populations," Carter
said of Israeli attacks. (Reuters)
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Carter, the founder of the nonprofit Carter Center
in Atlanta, also questioned the Israeli tactics in both Palestine and
Lebanon.
"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 Hizbullah for provoking the
devastating response."
Israel launched an open-ended offensive against the
impoverished Gaza Strip on June 28 after Palestinian resistance groups
took a soldier as a prisoner to swap him for 95 women and 313 children
who are among almost 10,000 Arabs in Israeli prisons.
The massive destruction caused by the Israeli
bombardment and almost non-stop air raids left the Palestinians with
the impression that Israel was only punishing them for elected the
resistance movement Hamas to power.
Israel has also been pounding Lebanon, killing at
least 750 Lebanese, most of them civilians, and laying waste to much
of the country's infrastructure, since July 12 after Hizbullah also
took two soldiers prisoners to trade them for Lebanese detainees.
"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," Carter insisted.
Occupied Shebaa
Carter offered a recipe for the Lebanon crisis,
different from the one sponsored by the Bush administration.
"The urgent need in Lebanon is that Israeli
attacks stop," he insisted.
"Israel should withdraw from all Lebanese
territory, including Shebaa Farms, and release the Lebanese
prisoners," Carter said, recalling that Israeli Prime Minister
Ehud Olmert has rejected a ceasefire.
He also stressed that the Lebanese army should take
control of south Lebanon, Hizbullah cease as a separate fighting force
and future attacks against Israel be prevented.
Israel has approved a plan whereby five
brigade-level commands would be pushed into south Lebanon and could
include occupying the area until the Litani river, some 30 km (18
miles) north of the Israel-Lebanon border, a main demarcation line
during the 18-year occupation of Lebanon which ended in 2000.
The US has been resisting mounting calls from Arab
and European allies for an immediate ceasefire, insisting Hizbullah
must release the soldiers and the Lebanese army deploy in the south
before such a step.
"Strange Policy"
Carter further faulted the current US Mideast
foreign policy.
"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," he stressed.
"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 US assertions."
Carter was referring to the Bush administration's
adamancy to enter into a dialogue with key parties it dislikes like
Syria and Iran.
He said direct engagement with parties like the
Syrian government will be necessary for a permanent settlement to the
Middle East conflict.
"Failure to address the issues and leaders
involved risks the creation of an arc of even greater instability
running from (occupied) Jerusalem through Beirut, Damascus, Baghdad
and Tehran," warned the former US president.
Writing in The Washington Post Sunday, July 30,
former Secretary of State Warren Christopher faulted incumbent
Condoleezza Rice for failing to reach out to other parties like Syria
and Iran.
He said refusing to speak with those the US
dislikes "is a recipe for frustration and failure."
The US foreign policy in the region and
"its-my-way-or-the-highway" approach have been sharply
criticized by former US diplomats and analysts, especially over the
fiasco handling of the Lebanon war.
"The people of the Middle East deserve peace
and justice, and we in the international community owe them our strong
leadership and support," Carter concluded.
