Carter on Palestine

One of the problems of people who trust nobody's judgment more than their own, based on their own knowledge and thought, is that it becomes difficult to fully agree with serious conclusions of kindred peers. The benefits derived from such an attitude easily outweigh the drawbacks, if you have the courage to be honest with yourself as to the reliability of your own competence on the matter at hand compared to that of the other(s), and can learn from your mistakes. If I transferred my trust to someone else, because I couldn't trust myself, how could I expect to have picked the right “else”.

Former US president Jimmy Carter has recently had quite a bit to say, and do, about the Arab / Israeli, specifically Israeli / Palestinian conflict. Given my current eyesight, I avoid reading books, including his ( Jimmy Carter, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid , Simon & Schuster, 2006 ),
but have enough of an idea about his arguments that have created a furor, for an opinion to emerge. The word Apartheid in the title had already become de rigueur in anti-Israeli propaganda to describe intercommunity relation in Israel, too, and attacked without qualification in the Lobby propaganda. In the occupied territories, there obviously are Apartheid like features, like roads from which Palestinians are barred; and that is what I understand Carter to suggest; with a view to provoke soul searching discussion. I can respect Shulamit Aloni's (pro Israeli) opinion that it holds within the state, too; also those who claim things that are worse than in South Africa, but prefer Carter's. If and when the occupation is over, Uri Avneri's attitude, that it was a unique case of its own, may well prevail.

(Resumed June 21: That agreement did not mean that I had to agree with Carter when he advocated engagement with Hamas, as did Avnery; although their stand must have contributed to my keeping an open mind in spite of principled opposition to those who would impose their religious strictures on others who don't feel bound by them. But while the secular majority of Israeli Jews, as well as Palestinians, are subject to the whims of the politico-religious squatters (“settlers”) in the occupied territories, it is harder to insist on the other half of that principle. And I had seen much stranger positions from Israeli governments than their refusal to recognize and deal with an elected group that refuses to recognize and deal with (elected) them. But if Carter's meeting with Hamas leaders contributed to the cease fire now agreed on, it was probably a good idea, at least if it ends the Gaza siege.

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