Most would have predicted that the first American president to call himself “born again” (hence, evangelical Protestant) would be a staunch defender of the state of Israel. As you will remember from my first post in this series, a large majority of evangelicals are “Christian Zionists,” and therefore unsympathetic to any call for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This couldn’t be further from the truth in Jimmy Carter’s case.
Carter was ahead of his time. One of his campaign promises was to revive peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, so he studied the positions of his predecessors and United Nations decisions on the issue. In this 2006 book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, he lists some of the things he learned while still on the campaign trail:
“Our nation’s constant policy had been predicated on a few key United Nations Security Council resolutions, notably 242 of 1967 (Appendix 1) and 338 of 1973 (Appendix 2). Approved unanimously and still applicable, their basic premise is that Israel’s acquisition of territory by force is illegal and that Israel must withdraw from occupied territories; that Israel has the right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries; that the refugee problem must be settled; and that the international community should assist with negotiations to achieve a just and durable peace in the Middle East. More specifically, U.S. policy was that Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza were ‘illegal and obstacles to peace.’” (p. 39)
All this should ring a bell with you from my second blog post in this series on human rights and international law. The founding of the UN in 1945 and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights three year later became the foundation for the many conventions and treaties that have followed, which now comprise international law. The above quote shows that U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East in 1977 when Carter took office paid deference to international law and, in particular, to UN resolutions 242 and 338. And he had no intention of changing that. In fact, he was the only American president to declare repeatedly that his foreign policy would be based on human rights.
The road leading to the 1978 Camp David Accords
On the first page of his autobiography at 90 (A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety), Jimmy Carter quotes his vice-president Walter Mondale, “We told the truth, we obeyed the law, and we kept the peace.” Then Carter adds, “We championed human rights” (pp. 1-2). He certainly strove to do so. In the case of Israel and Palestine, and only a few weeks into his presidency, Carter made this very controversial statement, “There has to be a homeland for the Palestinian refugees who have suffered for many, many years” (Palestine: Peace not Apartheid, p. 39). Then, in this same passage, he comments, “This would be the first move toward supporting a Palestinian State” (p. 39).
You have to understand that, even today, mentioning any kind of settlement of the Palestinian refugee problem is to ring the death knell of any peace talks. The Oslo Accords of 1993 considered both the status of Jerusalem and the settlement of Palestinian refugees to be the two most contentious issues, and therefore to be left for the final stage of negotiations—which, we now know, never came. Yet Resolution 242 “affirms the necessity . . . for achieving a just settlement of the refugee problem.”
God must have heard Carter’s prayers. Just two weeks on the heel of that bombshell statement on Palestinian refugees, President Sadat of Egypt came to Washington. Carter recalls,
“Sadat told me plainly that the was willing to take bold steps toward peace, all of them based on the prevailing U.N. Security Council Resolutions. We discussed some of the specific elements of possible direct negotiations in the future: Israel’s permanent boundaries, the status of Jerusalem, Palestinian rights, and—almost inconceivable at the time—free trade and open borders between the two nations, plus full diplomatic recognition and the exchange of ambassadors” (pp. 39-40).
Meanwhile, Menachem Begin replaced Yitzhak Rabin as prime minister a month later. Carter immediately did some research on Begin (recall that he had masterminded the bombing of the King David Hotel in 1948). This was the first time since Israel’s independence that the Labor Party lost an election to the Likud Party, and it signaled a much more conservative and hawkish position toward any potential peace process: the starting premise now was that Gaza and the West Bank will never be ceded to the Arabs. After all, Begin won election on being a “fighting Jew.”
Carter was pleasantly surprised during Begin’s first visit to Washington that he seemed “quite willing to pursue some of the major goals” he had discussed with Sadat (p. 42). Then Sadat, that November, “made a dramatic peace initiative by going directly to Jerusalem.” His public speech was in Arabic (he was anxious above all to convince his fellow Arab leaders). Because of the symbolism of the visit, the speech thrilled the Israelis and impressed Western leaders. Moderate Arab leaders were more cautious in their appraisals, while Syrian, Iraqi, Libyan and Palestinian leaders called for his assassination (which came four years later).
Carter’s working relationship with Begin soon became strained, however, especially after Israel invaded Lebanon in March 1978 and “used American-made antipersonnel cluster bombs against Beirut and other urban centers, killing hundreds of civilians.” This was in response to the PLO killing 35 Israeli tourists, but Carter called this invasion a completely disproportionate reaction, and furthermore, an illegal use of U.S. weaponry (they had been given solely for defensive purposes). Carter initiated a UN Security Council Resolution condemning Israel’s invasion, which was passed unanimously, and Israeli forces withdrew from Lebanon.
But Carter struggled to move peace negotiations forward that spring and summer. Then, as he puts it, “[m]y next act of one of desperation”:
“I decided to invite both Begin and Sadat to Camp David so that we could be away from routine duties for a few days and, in relative isolation, I could act as mediator between the two national delegations. They accepted without delay, and on September 4 we began what evolved into a thirteen-day session, which involved teams of about 50 on each side. My aim was to have Israelis and Egyptians understand and accept the compatibility of many of their goals and the advantages to both nations in resolving their differences” (p. 45).
“Begin and Sadat were personally incompatible,” recalls Carter. He had to ferry back and forth, night and day, but his own dogged endurance paid off: “it avoided the harsh rhetoric and personal arguing between the two leaders” (p. 46). Several times, however, “either Begin or Sadat was ready to terminate the discussions and return home,” but Carter, who spent time with each one talking about their grandchildren, managed to get them back to the negotiating table.
There were unexpected breakthroughs, too. A meticulous semanticist, Begin surprised Carter in his insistence that the final text should read “full autonomy” for the Palestinians. Several key members of his team won him over on more than a few sticking points. On the Egyptian side, Sadat was the most eager to push through the most comprehensive possible peace treaty. Thankfully in the end, both sides fully honored Resolution 242 and most of Sadat’s early wishes for a wide-ranging Israeli-Egyptian peace deal came to fruition.
I mentioned that Carter was ahead of his time. Much of what transpired in the 1978 Camp David Accords served as the foundation for the 1993 Oslo Agreement between Israel and the PLO.
Carter called Israel’s military occupation “apartheid”
As the Israelis built the “security barrier” in the early 2000s—purportedly to keep suicide bombers from coming into Israel (it was partially successful on that score)—encircling the West Bank but also stealing about 9 percent of Palestinian land to protect some of the largest Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories. Carter’s chapter on this is entitled, “The Wall as a Prison.” In its second paragraph, he comments,
“Their presumption is that an encircling barrier will finally resolve the Palestinian problem. Utilizing their political and military dominance, they are imposing a system of partial withdrawal, encapsulation, and apartheid on the Muslim and Christian citizens of the occupied territories. The driving purpose for the forced separation of the two peoples is unlike that in South Africa—not racism, but the acquisition of land. There has been a determined and remarkably effective effort to isolate settlers from Palestinians, so that a Jewish family can commute from Jerusalem to their highly subsidized home deep in the West Bank on roads from which others are excluded, without ever coming in contact with any facet of Arab life” (p. 189-190).
Already in 2002, Archbishop Desmond Tutu published an article in the Guardian with the title, “Apartheid in the Holy Land.” He came away “distressed” from a recent visit there, because it reminded him so much of how his black people were treated in South Africa. He explains, “I have seen the humiliation of the Palestinians at checkpoints and roadblocks, suffering like us when young white police officers prevented us from moving about.”
As a Nobel Peace Laureate for his work on the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Archbishop Tutu joined Jimmy Carter and other older world statesmen working for peace and human rights. In this helpful 2024 article, “Desmond Tutu: ‘Israeli apartheid worse than South Africa,’” Tutu told the Washington Post in 2013, “I wish I could keep quiet about the plight of the Palestinians. I can’t! The God who was there and showed that we should become free is the God described in the Scriptures as the same yesterday, today and forever.”
Both Tutu and Carter were pioneers in applying the concept of apartheid to the Israeli subjugation of the Palestinians. In recent years, the term has become very common, and not just in United Nations circles. Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic candidate in the New York mayoral race, uses the term freely and stands a good chance of winning his election. In another installment, I’ll mention how a majority of American Jews want a two-state solution to the conflict. But I’ll end here with a statement by the oldest and most influential Israeli human rights organization, Bet’Tselem. In 2021, they wrote a press release entitled, “A regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: this is apartheid.”
“The key tool Israel uses to implement the principle of Jewish supremacy is engineering space geographically, demographically and politically. Jews go about their lives in a single, contiguous space where they enjoy full rights and self-determination. In contrast, Palestinians live in a space that is fragmented into several units, each with a different set of rights – given or denied by Israel, but always inferior to the rights accorded to Jews.”
In the end, for Archbishop Tutu, Jimmy Carter, activists all over the world and a great majority of Palestinians themselves, speaking truth about injustice is important, but only for the sake of working for peace and reconciliation. As you can read in the mission statement of Bet’Tselem, their goal is striving “for a future in which human rights, liberty and equality are guaranteed to all people.” I hope we all agree to this and do our utmost to make it happen.