Carter: Netanyahu faces clash with Obama over peace process

[Violet_Crumble]

A day before Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivers what has been described as a key policy speech at Bar-Ilan University, former U.S. president Jimmy Carter told Haaretz in an exclusive interview on Saturday that President Barack Obama will not change his position on the two-state solution and Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

Carter added that Israel and the United States are on a collision course if Israel refuses to comply on these two issues. (Click here to read the full interview)

Carter said Obama had "committed to a worldwide audience" to bring about a complete stop to settlements, which he called "the key obstacle to any peace agreements."

Carter also said he was against allowing the expansion of some settlements to accommodate natural growth, and that during his term settlements were viewed as "illegal and an obstacle to peace. Absolutely ... I never changed my opinion about that."

"Begin promised me - and Sadat - very clearly that there would be no more settlement building during the time of peace talks," Carter said. "It wasn't easy to get it, but Begin made that commitment. Shortly after we left Camp David, Begin maintained that his presumption was that peace talks would be over in three months.

"Obama promised as best as he can to have a comprehensive peace before the end of his term, 2012. One thing we have in common is that I started working on Mideast peace on my first day in office, even before. He has promised me and others during his campaign that he would do that. He has kept that promise. That's a dramatic difference between the Clinton and the Bush administrations and Obama's."

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1092568.html

[HamdenRice]

1. I have a sincere question about settlements as obstacles to peace-all views welcome

This has always puzzled me about settlements, and the way that Israelis and Palestinians view them, and the way Israelis have treated settlements from territory they've withdrawn from.

I completely understand why occupied settlements are an obstacle to peace, inflame Palestinian opinion, etc., etc.

What I don't understand is the view that once a settlement is built, assuming that there is some future peace, that a settlement can't be abandoned and turned over to the Palestinians. There is an underlying logic that settlements are expensive and that once they are built, they have to either remain occupied by Israels or get destroyed as a precondition to territorial transfer, which would be a massive waste of resources. It reminds me of the famous fake advertisement from either Spy or Mad magazine of a gun to a dog's head that says something like buy this product or we'll shoot this dog; it's kind of like give us this territory permanently or we'll have to destroy this real estate. Israelis have destroyed the physical settlements in Sinai and Gaza when they withdrew and it seems to be an assumption that they would do so on the West Bank as well.

I've also heard that Palestinian family structure and living standards are so different from Israeli that the actual format of the homes and apartments are unsuitable to eventual Palestinian ownership. Again this seems pretty dubious to me, considering I've seen black South Africans move into white South African suburbs with no big problem. I've also heard that Palestinian detest the physical settlements so much that no one would live there. I find the idea that they would turn down free or low cost housing kind of hard to believe. I've also heard the argument that it is to prevent the Israeli settlers from having any object of nostalgia or even further political struggle (ie, they don't want any former settlers thinking "our old homes are over there full of Palestinian 'squatters'").

So if the Palestinians and Israelis assumed that what was being constructed was essentially housing (and I'm NOT saying that any more SHOULD BE constructed), and that if occupied territory is returned to Palestinians, the housing will be transferred in tact to the Palestinians, would that make the settlements a slightly less contentious issue?

[safeinOhio]

2. It will take a virtual civil war

in Israel to move the crazy fundamentalist settlers from the West Bank. They will fight to the death to stay, while no one in Israel wants them for neighbors. They are the other side of the coin, that is that they are as crazy as Hamas.