Carter continued, "There's no possibility in our country of a member of Congress or a candidate for President saying that they're going to take a balanced position between Israel and the Palestinians - or to speak out with concern about Palestinian human rights: that's impossible in this country."
Carter first traveled to Israel in 1973 as Governor of Georgia and felt that "the 'plight' of the Arabs 'seemed of relative insignificance to me…the Arabs were not being persecuted then. There were a total of 1,500 Israeli settlers in the West Bank, and they had been on kibbutzim - individual farms that they had acquired - for decades. And that was before there was any massive effort by the Israeli government to colonize the West Bank in order to confiscate it. I met with the top leaders in Israel, and all of them presumed that that land belonged to the Palestinians, and there was no concept at that point, at least by the ones with whom I met, that they would simply take over that land and keep it permanently, as it seems to be now." [IBID]
In November 2005, this reporter attended the Gainesville, Florida, Anarchist’s Against the Wall Power Point Lecture by Jonathon Pollak, an intense young Israeli and committed activist and organizer for Anarchist’s Against the Wall/AAtW, a collaborative NONVIOLENT resistance and civil disobedience group of Palestinians, Israelis and Internationals dedicated to bringing the separation/apartheid wall down.
Pollak said, “During the negotiations of the so-called Oslo Peace Process from 1993-2000, Israel simply imposed its will on the Palestinians, using its overwhelming military and economic power, and US support. During seven years of supposed peace, Palestinians saw 200,000 new Israeli settlers arrive in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, the same number of settlers that had arrived there in the previous 26 years.
“However, the recent grassroots struggle against Israel’s Wall has demonstrated that it may be possible to counter Israel’s overwhelming power, and its exploitation of negotiations, through nonviolent resistance. The Wall, one blatant recent Israeli attempt to impose its will, has become a focus for civilian resistance.
“Although Israel marketed the Wall as a security barrier, logic suggests such a barrier would be as short and straight as possible. Instead, it snakes deep inside the West Bank, resulting in a route that is twice as long as the Green Line, the internationally recognized border. Israel chose the Wall’s path in order to dispossess Palestinians of the maximum land and water, to preserve as many Israeli settlements as possible, and to unilaterally determine a border.
“In order to build the Wall Israel is uprooting tens of thousands of ancient olive trees that for many Palestinians are also the last resource to provide food for their children. The Palestinian aspiration for an independent state is also threatened by the Wall, as it isolates villages from their mother cities and divides the West Bank into disconnected cantons [bantusans/ghettos]. The Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem conservatively estimates that 500,000 Palestinians are negatively impacted by the Wall.
“Faced with a history of suffering, Palestinians have no alternative but to struggle. The only question is how? Killing diminishes our humanity, and Israel’s occupation, which has killed thousands of Palestinians, shouldn’t be our teacher. It is time for both sides to refuse killing.
“We believe that, as with Apartheid South Africa, Americans have a vital role to play in ending Israeli occupation - by divesting from companies that support Israeli occupation, boycotting Israeli products, coming to Palestine as witnesses, or standing with Palestinians in nonviolent resistance.
“We are confident that Israeli occupation will one day be defeated, as were other US government supported repressive regimes - Apartheid South Africa, Pinochet’s Chile and racial segregation in the United States. There is no price too great to pay for freedom, and nothing will deter us from achieving this goal.”
"If apartheid in South Africa ended, so can the occupation of Palestine. But, the moral force and international pressure will have to be just as determined." Bishop Desmond Tutu, The Nation, July 15, 2002.
The good news is the international community is exerting pressure and it begins with the Global June 5th initiative: Two States, Two People = One Peace
http://www.june5thinitiative.org/
It continues as we the people gather in DC to light a FIRE under Congress June 10-11, 2007 http://www.endtheoccupation.org/
1. http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,2088878,00.html
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