Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, the guiding hand behind the endangered Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty, urges the United Nations to recognize the Palestinian Authority.
Contradicting the Obama administration’s insistence that PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas return to direct talks with Israel, he said in Atlanta Tuesday, “As an alternative to a deadlock and a stalemate now, we reluctantly support the Palestinian move for recognition.”
A request from the Arab League to the United Nations to officially recognize the PA as an independent state and full member of the international body will not succeed because the United States has said it will cast a veto if it reaches the Security Council. However, the General Assembly, with its solid pro-Arab majority, can pass a symbolic resolution in favor of the Palestinian Authority.
Carter said such a step would be a “real step forward”.
Ignoring the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood and radical Islamists, he continued:“The Arab Spring has brought hope for democracy and freedom to many of the people in the region,” he stated. “I hope that eventually it will potentially bring about a change in the prospects of a peace agreement to be negotiated between Israel and its neighbors. But it would require Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories and that’s something that so far the Israeli government has been unable to do."
Ex-President Carter is the author of the anti-Israel book “Palestine: Peace or Apartheid,” in which he misrepresents UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 336, erroneously citing them as proof that Israel must withdraw to the 1949 armistice lines. In the book, he calls the 1949 armistice lines international borders, says Israel has never “granted appreciable autonomy to the Palestinians” (ignoring the establishment and continued existence of the Palestinian Authority), and claims that Syria was prepared to accept a demilitarized Golan Heights which Syria specifically denied.