Eran Lerman, the director of the American Jewish Committee's Israel and Middle Eastern Office, pens an op-ed in the Rocky Mountain News that dismantles Jimmy Carter's latest literary effort. Lerman gives Carter credit for good intentions, and so is more tolerant than I am on that.
Five key objections to his approach need to be raised – not because Israel should be above criticism, but rather because the false anticipation of such an external "verdict" is precisely what has vitiated the Palestinians' future, and the peace process, for much too long. Carter hopes to help the Palestinians; Carter's book does them a disservice.
1. To begin with, there is the title – and the jacket, which helps perpetuate a false image of the "wall" of separation (and the "facts" he quotes about the barrier are equally inaccurate). To allude to the loaded issue of race – from the depth of Carter's own experience in the transition form the old to the new South; let alone the apartheid regime in South Africa – is to misread the very nature of the conflict between two nations which have no racial differentiation between them.
2. Of far greater consequence is the constantly repeated assertion that Israel is in breach of U.N. Security Council Resolution 242. Carter claims that the solution lies in "Withdrawal to the 1967 border as specified in U.N. Resolution 242 and as promised in the Camp David Accords and the Oslo Agreement and prescribed in the Roadmap . . . Peace will come to Israel and the Middle East only when the Israeli government is willing to comply with international law" (Pages 215-216).
Therein lies, tragically, the false hope, offered here to the Palestinians, that the need to seek a reasonable accommodation with the mainstream of Israeli opinion can be replaced by some coercive international judgment upon Israel's policies.
But neither the specific history of 242 (which Carter ignores), nor the language of Camp David, Oslo and the Roadmap support his reading.
There are more reasons, I'd encourage you to read it all. It really hammers Carter and his book. Even if Carter has had good intentions on a lot of things, I find it very hard to give him that kind of credit for this terrible book of his. This is so blatantly anti-Israel, so hideously one-sided, that it is pretty hard to give him even the benefit of the doubt. But even if you do grant him that slack, consider what gets paved with good intentions.
