From the Amazon review
The general parameters of a long-term, two-state agreement are well known, the president writes. There will be no substantive and permanent peace for any peoples in this troubled region as long as Israel is violating key U.N. resolutions, official American policy, and the international “road map” for peace by occupying Arab lands and oppressing the Palestinians.
From Pg. 216 (via ZNet)
The bottom line is this: Peace will come to Israel and the Middle East only when the Israeli government is willing to comply with international law, with the Roadmap for Peace, with official American policy, with the wishes of a majority of its own citizens–and honors its own previous commitments–by accepting its legal borders. All Arab neighbors must pledge to honor Israel’s right to live in peace under these conditions. The United States is squandering international prestige and goodwill and intensifying global anti-American terrorism by unofficially condoning or abetting the Israeli confiscation and colonization of Palestinian territories.
Hardliners on both sides are attacking the book. However Carter is the first president I know of to flat state that the rights of Palestinians and Palestine are equal to those of Israel, and this is definitely a step in the right direction.
CounterPunch sums it up
Carter falls short of a full critique of Israel’s treatment of non-Jews under its rule, but his book challenges Americans to see the conflict with eyes wide open. He places the blame on “Israel’s continued control and colonization of Palestinian land” as “the primary obstacles to a comprehensive peace agreement in the Holy Land” and he places equal blame on the United States for “the condoning of illegal Israeli actions from a submissive White House and U.S. Congress in recent years.”
Carter also says nothing about the U.S. financial and military support that props up Israel. Without such support of course, Israel would barely exist, much less be able to build apartheid walls to imprison Palestinians.
The biggest contribution this book makes is that it ‘officially’ calls Israel an apartheid state, something which although infuriating both the Democratic and Republican Party, is unquestionably true.
