Israel Occupation Cause of Conflict: Carter
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"Israel should withdraw from all Lebanese territory, including Shebaa Farms, and release the Lebanese prisoners," Carter said.
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."
Inhumane
"…it is inhumane and counterproductive to punish civilian populations," Carter said of Israeli attacks. (Reuters)
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.
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