Jimmy Carter was right about Israel

Image courtesy of Oriental Review

So President Obama gave a big speech about the Israel-Palestine conflict the other day and Israel’s not happy about what he said.

What a surprise.

The POTUS said, among other things, that peace negotiations should begin with a discussion of returning to the borders that existed before the 1967 Middle East War. (During the war, Israel seized the West Bank, Gaza, Golan Heights and the Sinai Peninsula. The Sinai has since been returned to Egypt. Israel annexed the Golan Heights in 1981, a move that Syria condemns and the international community doesn’t recognize.)

Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the right-wing graduate of MIT and Harvard, responded that such a move is impossible “in light of current security concerns and demographic realities.”

Netanyahu, a former Israeli Defense Forces captain who for his own political reasons has been stalling the peace process since he took office in 2009, said "Israel wants peace. I want peace. But a peace based on illusions will crash eventually on the rocks of Middle Eastern reality."

If you looked up “not everyone who claims to want peace really wants peace” in the dictionary, you’d see a picture of Bibi Netanyahu.

This is the guy who compared the leadership of Iran to Nazi Germany and has refused to support the creation of a Palestinian state or freeze the growth of Israeli settlements in the West Bank or stop demolishing Arab homes in East Jerusalem.

This is the guy who was caught on video back in 2001 saying, “I know what America is. America is a thing you can move very easily, move in the right direction. They won’t get in our way.”

Now Orrin Hatch (R-UT) has joined other disciples of AIPAC in opposing Obama’s call for a two-state solution to the conflict. He’s promised to introduce a resolution in the U.S. Senate opposing Obama’s proposals.

Oh, no, Orrin! Not that!

In fact, Obama didn’t call for a direct return to the 1967 borders for Israel, as conservatives and Netanyahu have represented. Instead, he reiterated what other U.S. presidents and others in the international community have stated: that those lines should be the initial basis for talks. And refreshingly, he rejected our government’s blind allegiance to Israel in the process.

In his bestselling book, Palestine: Peace, Not Apartheid, former President Jimmy Carter – who knows a thing or two about the Middle East – argues that "Israel's continued control and colonization of Palestinian land have been the primary obstacles to a comprehensive peace agreement in the Middle East."

I used to feel sorry for the Palestinians. Now I feel sorry for the people of Israel too.



Sources: CNN, Talking Points Memo, The Daily Beast, BBC News, The Guardian.