Jimmy Carter Crystalizes Middle East Dilema

By Ben Cohen

Jimmy Carter is one of the few main stream Americans willing to speak out about the appalling treatment of the Palestinians. In this in depth interview on 'The Daily Beast', the former President encapsulates the crux of the problem in one short paragraph. When asked why the two state solution was so far away from being a reality, Carter replied:

So far it’s been because the Israelis have not

been willing to take the crucial step, and that is to withdraw from the

Palestinian territory, the West Bank. And this is a crucial point and

Israel has not only kept increasing [the settlements] in number, but

have built highways among all the settlements from which the

Palestinians are now excluded. And they started building a wall in the

Palestinian area of the West Bank, and apparently the inexorable moves

have been to forego the possibility of the two state solution. If [the

Israelis] accept this two state solution they’re going to have to

withdraw from the West Bank enough for the Palestinians to have a rival

and contiguous state. They haven’t been willing to do that yet.

It is beyond me why this is so difficult for the American public to see this. The whole world understands how badly the Palestinians have been treated. We have seen them massacred on live TV, their land continually stolen in front of our noses, and watched Israeli leaders admit to war crimes, yet the myth pervades that Israel is a force for good. How much longer can we go on denying reality?

photo by Nrbelex