Haaretz
Adar 19, 5767
Despite the storm it
ignited, former U.S. president Jimmy Carter held fast on Thursday to his
accusation that Israel oppresses the Palestinians on the West Bank and
Gaza and seeks to colonize their land.
Speaking at The George
Washington University to a polite but mostly critical student audience,
Carter offered no second thoughts on his book Palestine: Peace Not
Apartheid that prompted 14 members of the Carter Center's advisory board
to resign and drew fire from Jewish groups and some fellow
Democrats.
He said he was not accusing Israel of racism nor
referring to its treatment of Arabs within the country. "I defined
apartheid very carefully as the forced segregation by one people of
another on their own land," he said.
Outside the university
auditorium, some two dozen protesters gathered, a few carrying signs.
"Carter is a Liar" read one held by a smiling demonstrator while the
others chanted the refrain.
"We were trying to tell Carter his lies
are not helpful," a local rabbi, Shmuel Herzfeld, said afterward. "It is
very clear the lies are malicious, and it raises issues what his motives
are," Herzfeld said.
"I believe Jimmy Carter is an anti-Semite and
his intention is to hurt Jewish people," said Herzfeld, rabbi at Ohev
Sholom, in an interview.
On the other side of the argument, a local
group called the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation distributed a
four-page brochure that said "without U.S. aid Israel could not continue
to discriminate against its Palestinian-Israeli citizens nor violate
international rights in the occupied territories."
On the West
Bank, Carter said, Palestinians were victims of oppression, their homes
and land confiscated to make way for subsidized Israeli
settlers.
"The life of Palestinians is almost intolerable," he
said. "And even though Israel agreed to give up Gaza and remove Jewish
settlers from the territory, there is no freedom for the people of Gaza
and no access to the outside world."
"They have no real freedom of
all," Carter said.
By apartheid, Carter said he meant the forced
segregation of one people by another. He said Israel's policies in the
territories are contrary to the tenets of the Jewish faith.
"There
will be no peace until Israel agrees to withdraw from all occupied
Palestinian territory," he said, while leaving room for some land swaps
that would permit Jews to remain on part of the West Bank in exchange for
other Israeli-held land to be taken over by
Palestinians.
"Withdrawal would dramatically reduce any threat to
Israel," he said.
Carter recalled the role he played as president
in negotiations that led to the 1979 peace treaty between Israel and Egypt
and in a dramatic increase in Jewish emigration from the Soviet
Union.
The treaty required Israel to relinquish all of the land
Egypt lost in the 1967 Six Day War in exchange for recognition by the most
powerful Arab country.
"I have spent a good part of my life seeking
peace for Israel based on justice for the Arabs," he said.
In
response to a student's question, Carter denounced as abominable
anti-Israeli statements by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad and said
he supported U.S. dialogue with Iran and Syria.