Product Description

President Carter, who was able to negotiate peace between Israel and Egypt, has remained deeply involved in Middle East affairs since leaving the White House. He has stayed in touch with the major players from all sides in the conflict and has made numerous trips to the Holy Land, most recently as an observer in the Palestinian elections of 2006. In this book President Carter shares his intimate knowledge of the history of the Middle East and his personal experiences of the principal actors, and he addresses sensitive political issues many British and American officials shy from. Palestine is a challenging and provocative book. Pulling no punches, Carter prescribes steps that must be taken for the two states to share the Holy Land without a system of apartheid or the constant fear of terrorism.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #155927 in Books
• Published on: 2006-11-14
• Released on: 2006-11-14
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 264 pages

Amazon.com Review
The crowning achievement of Jimmy Carter's presidency was the Camp David Accords between Israel and Egypt, and he has continued his public and private diplomacy ever since, winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for his decades of work for peace, human rights, and international development. He has been a tireless author since then as well, writing bestselling books on his childhood, his faith, and American history and politics, but in Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, he has returned to the Middle East and to the question of Israel's peace with its neighbors--in particular, how Israeli sovereignty and security can coexist permanently and peacefully with Palestinian nationhood.

It's a rare honor to ask questions of a former president, and we are grateful that President Carter was able to take the time in between his work with his wife, Rosalynn, for the Carter Center and Habitat for Humanity and his many writing projects to speak with us about his hopes for the region and his thoughts on the book.

A big thank you to President Carter for granting our request for an interview.

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An Interview with President Jimmy Carter

Q: What has been the importance of your own faith in your continued interest in peace in the Middle East?
A: As a Christian, I worship the Prince of Peace. One of my preeminent commitments has been to bring peace to the people who live in the Holy Land. I made my best efforts as president and still have this as a high priority.

Q: A common theme in your years of Middle East diplomacy has been that leaders on both sides have often been more open to discussion and change in private than in public. Do you think that's still the case?
A: Yes. This is why private and intense negotiations can be successful. More accurately, however, my premise has been that the general public (Jewish, Christian, and Muslim) are more eager for peace than their political leaders. For instance, a recent poll done by the Hebrew University in Jerusalem showed that 58% of Israelis and 81% of the Palestinians favor a comprehensive settlement similar to the Roadmap for Peace or the Saudi proposal adopted by all 23 Arab nations and recently promoted by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Tragically, there have been no substantive peace talks during the past six years.

Q: How have the war in Iraq and the increased strength of Iran (and the declarations of their leaders against Israel) changed the conditions of the Israel-Palestine question?
A: Other existing or threatened conflicts in the region greatly increase the importance of Israel's having peace agreements with its neighbors, to minimize overall Arab animosity toward both Israel and the United States and reduce the threat of a broader conflict.

Q: Your use of the term "apartheid" has been a lightning rod in the response to your book. Could you explain your choice? Were you surprised by the reaction?
A: The book is about Palestine, the occupied territories, and not about Israel. Forced segregation in the West Bank and terrible oppression of the Palestinians create a situation accurately described by the word. I made it plain in the text that this abuse is not based on racism, but on the desire of a minority of Israelis to confiscate and colonize Palestinian land. This violates the basic humanitarian premises on which the nation of Israel was founded. My surprise is that most critics of the book have ignored the facts about Palestinian persecution and its proposals for future peace and resorted to personal attacks on the author. No one could visit the occupied territories and deny that the book is accurate.

Q: You write in the book that "the peace process does not have a life of its own; it is not self-sustaining." What would you recommend that the next American president do to revive it?
A: I would not want to wait two more years. It is encouraging that President George W. Bush has announced that peace in the Holy Land will be a high priority for his administration during the next two years. On her January trip to the region, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has called for early U.S.-Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. She has recommended the 2002 offer of the Arab nations as a foundation for peace: full recognition of Israel based on a return to its internationally recognized borders. This offer is compatible with official U.S. Government policy, previous agreements approved by Israeli governments in 1978 and 1993, and with the International Quartet's "roadmap for peace." My book proposes that, through negotiated land swaps, this "green line" border be modified to permit a substantial number of Israelis settlers to remain in Palestine. With strong U.S. pressure, backed by the U.N., Russia, and the European Community, Israelis and Palestinians would have to come to the negotiating table.

1/18/2007

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From Publishers Weekly
The term "good-faith" is almost inappropriate when applied to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a bloody struggle interrupted every so often by negotiations that turn out to be anything but honest. Nonetheless, thirty years after his first trip to the Mideast, former President Jimmy Carter still has hope for a peaceful, comprehensive solution to the region's troubles, delivering this informed and readable chronicle as an offering to the cause. An engineer of the 1978 Camp David Accords and 2002 recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, Carter would seem to be a perfect emissary in the Middle East, an impartial and uniting diplomatic force in a fractured land. Not entirely so. Throughout his work, Carter assigns ultimate blame to Israel, arguing that the country's leadership has routinely undermined the peace process through its obstinate, aggressive and illegal occupation of territories seized in 1967. He's decidedly less critical of Arab leaders, accepting their concern for the Palestinian cause at face value, and including their anti-Israel rhetoric as a matter of course, without much in the way of counter-argument. Carter's book provides a fine overview for those unfamiliar with the history of the conflict and lays out an internationally accepted blueprint for peace.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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From Publishers Weekly
It's hard to use standard criteria to assess this book. Former President Carter is not a very good reader; his tone is flat, and his pronunciation sometimes difficult. Nor is he a literary stylist; there is neither music nor imagery in his down-to-earth sentences. But Carter feels strongly that what he has to say is absent from public discourse and policy decisions, and he knows that his status and voice provide authority to what might otherwise be rejected out of hand as anti-Israeli propaganda. He explains that Israel has never complied with U.N. Resolution 242 and others; has never lived up to its agreements made over the years in Washington, Oslo and elsewhere; continues to grab land through settlements and placement of a wall well within Palestinian territory; and still imprisons thousands of Palestinian men, women and children. While pointing out many murderous and counterproductive moves of Arafat and various Palestinian groups, he pointedly lays the blame for the current situation at the door of the Israelis and their Washington backers, with special venom for Bush and Rice, who have been mute on the subject for six years—even during the invasion of Lebanon. Many will dispute his facts and counter his views, but Carter maintains that if we really want to understand and promote change in this region, we must know both sides of the story.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From School Library Journal
Adult/High School—This is not intended to be a scholarly work but rather a frank assessment of the current state of affairs in the Middle East by an experienced elder statesman. Maintaining that "there is a formula for peace with justice in this…portion of the world," ex-President Carter proceeds to argue his point with clarity and urgency. His perspective derives from his term as president, his successful brokering of peace between Egypt and Israel via the 1978 Camp David Accords, and his continued involvement with the Israeli/Palestinian issue in the 30 ensuing years. He includes necessary historical context, traces the role of the U.S. in each succeeding administration since he left office, and mentions vital roles played by Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia. Carter points to the 1979 Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty as proof that "ancient enemies" can coexist and sees hope in the statistical majorities of both Israelis and Palestinians who desire a resolution to conflict, despite the words and actions of some of their political leaders—whom he labels the "obstacles to peace." Whether one is steeped in knowledge of the Middle East or new to the subject, this book is essential reading, for it stimulates precisely the kind of dialogue that Carter believes is necessary to prod all affected peoples beyond present roadblocks to a just and lasting peace.—Dori DeSpain, Fairfax County Public Library, VA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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Customer Reviews

Provocative language by a a plain-talking peacemaker.
[...]
The constant attempts to denigrate Carter's Presidency (as though the long lines at that shrine to American privilege, the gas pump, and our foreign presence preceding the Iranian hostage crisis were of the President's making and, moreover, of greater consequence than the Iraq debacle) are belied once again by this uncommon man's common sense and clarity of vision, which is mirrored by the measured lucidity of his prose. Someone had to write this book, and better it be Carter, with his personal, and largely effective, negotiations with the principal players in the desperate power struggles of the middle East, than anyone else.

Carter's staunch opposition to the invasion of Iraq is a matter he no longer talked about once the "mission" became reality. His efforts are directed toward future solutions, not righteous reminders of the past or self-justifications, lest he risk mirroring the very narrow, self-serving interests he seeks to confront and redress through proposals based on negotiated peace, mutual respect, shared rights and, above all, on genuine human and religious (including Judeo-Christian) values.

The negative reactions to the book, I'm afraid, prove its importance. Many Americans remained "passively" approving of the Iraq war--despite not just its blatant imperialist aggressiveness but its sheer irrationality and absurdity--because of the perception that somehow America's "holy war," with its pageantry of "shock and awe," was in the interests of Israel. Although Carter's warnings, criticisms, and prescriptions in "Palestine Peace Not Apartheid" require as much of the Palestinians as the Israelis, the criticisms he has received come from narrow, defensive Americans who are incapable of rising to anything resembling an impartial, broad-based understanding of the "human community"--of the "family of man," as it was once called.

This is not a particularly hard-hitting account (its author is, after all, an ingenuous man of peace and good will). So the mean-spirited "hits" the book has been taking should in themselves be seen as a wake-up call--not just to Israelis and Palestinians but to Americans of every religion, ethnicity, class, and political stripe. If we "can't get along together," and if we can't model for the world a tradition-blind, color-blind melting pot instead of viewing that metallic vessel as a grenade, we can hardly pretend to be surprised the next time it blows up in our faces.

It takes courage to speak the truth on Israel. Well done Jimmy
For a people that have experienced so much persecution, it seems improper to criticize Israel's actions. Jimmy Carter has highlighted uncomfortable issues for American Jews (I am also one) to address. It was an important step forward that a well respected personality such as Carter wrote this book. Israel's 'realpolitik' towards the Palestinians is morally unsupportable. Terror has many tactics; it can come from government policies & tanks as well as suicide bombers.
My view is that it is time for American Jews to take the 'blue' pill, wake up and see the reality as it is, not what they wanted or were told it is. It's not a comfortable process to put into question assumptions that were taught since childhood. But blind devotion to a state is dangerous.
As we have seen with the Iraq war, a hard-right government can do things that its people realize is wrong. As is happening now in the US, we need to speak out in favor of a dramatic new course for Israel that may improve the chances for peace. It is high time that American Jews stop giving Israel (their hard-right gov't) a blank check of support irrespective of their actions and begin to treat Israel as the separate state that it is. The extreme right is the enemy of all peace loving people.

The semantics of apartheid: President Carter is correct in his use.
Apartheid: the second definition in my online dictionary is "segregation in other contexts [other than racial] : sexual apartheid." There is no doubt that the word apartheid can be and is correctly used as a segregation between Israelis and Palestinians within the Palestiniean territory (land occuppied and inhabited by Israel) as defined by the United Nations. This apartheid is formally established by a physical wall extending into Palestinian Territory.

President Carter is not talking about apartheid within the recognized (UN defined) territory of Israel but rather the apartheid that Israel has established by dividing Palestinian territory (UN defined) which he describes as Palestine into land for Israelis and land for Palestinians divided by a wall of apartheid based on a distiction between Israelis (in settlements)/Palestinians. When discussing language and semantics, one should be objective and actually acknowledge the definition as used by the author rather than interpret a word in a way other than as the author used it.

Please read this important book understanding what is actually meant by President Carter rather than the unfair and inaccurate description by those other than the author. (I will add that I spent over 20 years working in fields directly related to the interpretation of language and semantics in the development of international standards within the ISO. However, I've never learned to spell nor use proper sentence construction so please excuse any errors in these areas. Thanks.) READ THIS BOOK! Without addressing this aparheid as described by President Carter, there cannot be peace in the Middle East. U.S. Citezens need to discuss this issue because the discussion has not yet taken place and President Carter is asking us to have this discussion now.