Tikkun Magazine, January/February 2007
CURRENT THINKING
A Conversation with Jimmy Carter
Jimmy Carter needs little introduction. The first American president to sponsor a peace initiative between Israel and its Arab neighbors, Carter brokered, in 1979, Israel's most comprehensive peace agreement to date with Egypt, which included a full withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula. Though he suffered much criticism at the hands of Republicans while in office, Carter was perhaps the most progressive president in the postwar U.S., having strengthened numerous social programs—including social security—and appointing record numbers of women to office.
Since leaving the White House in 1981, Carter has devoted himself to humanitarian causes. Between founding Habitat for Humanity, which builds houses for the needy, establishing the Carter Center to further the promotion of democracy and human rights, monitoring elections around the world, serving as an international mediator, and writing numerous books on faith, politics and most recently, the Arab-Israeli conflict—Palestine Peace Not Apartheid—Carter is a spiritual progressive in every sense of the term.
Tikkun spoke to the 83-year-old Sunday School teacher (yes, he does that too) on the eve of his new book's publication.
TIKKUN: What inspired you to write this book?
JIMMY CARTER: For the last thirty years, my goal has been to find some way to have peace for Israel and its existence accepted by all nations including its Arab neighbors. Of course, I did the best I could when I was President. I've been distressed lately to see no progress made, and so, quite reluctantly, I decided to write this book. I hope that it will at least stimulate some debate in this country, which is rarely seen.
TIKKUN: What are the forces in this country that could be mobilized to achieve a more balanced approach toward the Middle East?
JC: When I was in the White House, support for Israel was just as strong in Congress as it is now. Jacob Javits and Hubert Humphrey, along with five major players in the U.S. Senate, were my allies. They saw a possibility of ending the persistent wars—there had been four wars in twenty-five years before I became president primarily centered around the military strength of Egypt. It turned out that Sadat was willing to accommodate my hope that we could have a peace treaty, which we have, and no word in that peace treaty has been violated since April of 1979. So, a cadre of Congressional leaders could say, "Look, we support Israel, we love Israel, and the best thing we can do for Israel is to bring about some accommodation between Israel and its neighbors based on existing international law, the Camp David Accords, the Road Map for Peace, the Oslo Agreement, on UN 242" and so forth. That's one hope that I still don't think is too remote.
Right now, though, it would be almost impossible to get any candidate for President or any particular members of Congress to be willing to do that. One of the things that's missing is any voice in the Jewish community who dares to be at all critical of anything that the right wing in Israel does. I don't know how to break that barrier. I think that within the global community, including Russia, the European Union, the United Nations, and hopefully the United States, there is an inclination to promote peace.
The other thing is that ever since I started negotiating with Rabin and then Begin, a substantial majority of Israelis have been in favor of swapping Arab land for peace. That element may be dormant right now, but it is potentially waiting to be aroused. Among some of the more enlightened Arab leaders—and I would include King Abdullah in Saudi Arabia and also in Jordan, among others—there is a rational approach to Israel's right to exist within its own legal borders, modified by negotiation. The elements are there if we can marshal them together.
TIKKUN: You've come out with a book whose title mentions "apartheid." Was your choice in terms one that you thought would help jump-start the discussion?
JC: Yes. I chose that title myself. I always emphasize that I hope that peace will prevail and that apartheid will not be the permanent choice. In the last few years, I have been throughout the West Bank and Gaza. We have monitored the last three Palestinian elections—the only three Palestinian elections—and in the process I've taken between forty and sixty of my associates through what I'll call Palestine, and we've covered the entire area. So we're familiar with what's going on.
What precipitated my willingness to write this book were the imposition of the [separation] wall on Palestinian territory, the confiscation of Palestinian land, and the dividing of the people on a permanent basis. I hate to say this, because I don't want to alienate you, but in some ways what is happening now between Israel and Palestine is worse than what happened in South Africa. But, in the book I make it clear that I am not referring to racism as a basis, but as a desire of a minority of Israelis to occupy, confiscate, and colonize Palestinian land.
TIKKUN: My one reservation about using the word "apartheid" is that it suggests that the policy is directed against an entire people based on their racial identity.
JC: I counteract that in my book by saying that I am not referring to a racist division but a geographical division of the land.
TIKKUN: As you know, Arabs have the vote in Israel.
JC: I'm not talking about inside of Israel at all. I am just talking about the occupied territories. If I had chosen the title "Peace in the Middle East," I am not sure it would arouse as much attention as the one that I chose. It was deliberately provocative because I think that there needs to be a debate about it. I don't really care how intense the debate gets. There just needs to be an assessment of what is there now.
TIKKUN: If there were a Democratic presidency and a Democratic Congress, would we be in a better or a worse position in relationship to changing American policies toward Israel?
JC: I think better. I really think better even if it's a Republican. The best President to actually try to implement the basic premises in my opinion was George Bush senior. It was not Clinton. I've read Rabbi Lerner's assessment of Clinton and Barak's relationship with Arafat and what was proposed was a completely unacceptable set of principles. One of the ones that I don't think Rabbi Lerner mentioned was that if the Palestinians accepted Clinton's proposal it would be the culmination of the application of all previous United Nations resolutions including 192 and 244 and 338, and that's something that no Palestinian could accept. I was intrigued with, in Rabbi Lerner's book, his map of the settlement outposts. It's one map that I wish I'd put in my book.
Jimmy Carter's Palestine Peace Not Apartheid is available from Simon and Schuster.
Source Citation
2007. A Conversation with Jimmy Carter. Tikkun 22(1): 6.
