Former President Jimmy Carter has condemned President Donald Trump’s sham Middle East peace plan and is urging the United Nations to reject it in a strong statement released on Thursday by the Carter Center.
Earlier this week, Trump announced the plan while standing next to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been indicted on charges of breach of trust, bribery, and fraud.
The plan comes just ahead of elections in both the United States and Israel, the first sign that this is nothing more than a sham plan designed to make Trump look like a deal-maker.
But the problem is that the Palestinians overwhelmingly reject the plan because it’s a gift to Israel, giving Netanyahu everything he wants while giving only scraps to the Palestinians.
For years, the international community, including the United States prior to Trump, has supported a two-state solution based on the boundaries in 1967. Since 1967, Israel has moved to seize more and more Palestinian lands by forcing them from their homes and building new settlements, all while claiming sovereignty over all of Jerusalem despite the fact that Palestinians consider east Jerusalem their capital.
Trump’s plan relegates Palestinians to the outskirts of east Jerusalem and recognizes Israeli control over all the territory it has taken from them over the decades. The Palestinians would be left with a fractured state, some of which would be connected by a long tunnel.
In a statement, the Carter Center blasted the proposal.
“President Trump’s plan for unilateral annexation to Israel of a large piece of the occupied Palestinian territories offers the Palestinians fragmented statehood, without control of their borders, in four years and subject to certain conditions, and leaves the status of large parts of the West Bank to be determined in the future,” the Center said. “Prime Minister Netanyahu has called for the immediate annexation to Israel of all settlements in the West Bank.”
“The plan violates the two-state solution based on the 1967 borders, which is codified in a long line of United Nations Security Council resolutions from 242 (1967) to 2334 (2016),” the Center continued. “Further, the proposal breaches international law regarding self-determination, the acquisition of land by force, and annexation of occupied territories. By calling Israel “the nation-state of the Jewish people,” the plan also encourages the denial of equal rights to the Palestinian citizens of Israel.”
Carter himself also condemned the plan as part of the statement.
“The new U.S. plan undercuts prospects for a just peace between Israelis and Palestinians,” Carter said. “If implemented, the plan will doom the only viable solution to this long-running conflict, the two-state solution.”
And Carter, who is the longest-lived president in United States history, knows a thing or two about negotiating Middle East peace treaties. After all, he brokered the Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel in 1978, one of the reasons why he is a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, a recognition Trump desperately wants for himself even if it means trying to fake peace to get it.
As such, Carter urged the United Nations “to adhere to UN Security Council resolutions and to reject any unilateral Israeli implementation of the proposal by grabbing more Palestinian land.”
Again, this is nothing more than a land grab by Israel and an endorsement of further injustices against the Palestinian people, who have suffered for years under Israeli fascism.
The American people should not support Trump’s plan because it’s not a true peace deal. Peace by inequality, occupation, and annihilation is not peace.
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