Carter Blasts US Policy on Palestinians as "criminal"
Former President Carter has called the behaviour of the US and Israel "criminal" in the way they have sought to undermine the democratically elected Hamas government.
Carter, a Nobel Peace Prize winner who was addressing a human rights conference in Ireland, said the Bush administration's refusal to accept Hamas' 2006 election victory was "criminal."Thank God, there are people like Carter who get it. We cannot say we believe in democracy and then insist that elections only bring forward governments that we agree with. As Rumsfeld famously said, "Freedom is messy". It sometimes brings forward governments that we do not agree with.
Carter said Hamas, besides winning a fair and democratic mandate that should have entitled it to lead the Palestinian government, had proven itself to be far more organized in its political and military showdowns with Abbas' moderate Fatah movement.
Hamas fighters routed Fatah in their violent takeover of the Gaza Strip last week. The split prompted Abbas to dissolve the power-sharing government with his rivals in Hamas and set up a Fatah-led administration to govern the West Bank.
Carter said the consensus of the U.S., Israel and the EU to start funneling aid to Abbas' new government in the West Bank but continue blocking Hamas in the Gaza Strip represented an "effort to divide Palestinians into two peoples."
"All efforts of the international community should be to reconcile the two, but there's no effort from the outside to bring the two together," he said.
The U.S. and European countries cut off the Hamas-led government last year because of the Islamic militant group's refusal to renounce violence and recognize Israel. They have continued to send humanitarian aid to Gaza through the United Nations and other organizations.
In the latest crisis, the U.S., Israel and much of the West have been trying to shore up Abbas in hopes that the West Bank can be made into a democratic example that would bring along Gaza.
During his speech to Ireland's annual Forum on Human Rights, the 83-year-old former president said monitors from his Carter Center observed the 2006 election that Hamas won. He said the vote was "orderly and fair" and Hamas triumphed, in part, because it was "shrewd in selecting candidates," whereas a divided, corrupt Fatah ran multiple candidates for single seats.
Far from encouraging Hamas' move into parliamentary politics, Carter said the U.S. and Israel, with European Union acquiescence, sought to subvert the outcome by shunning Hamas and helping Abbas to keep the reins of political and military power.
"That action was criminal," he said in a news conference after his speech.
"The United States and Israel decided to punish all the people in Palestine and did everything they could to deter a compromise between Hamas and Fatah," he said.
Carter said the U.S. and others supplied the Fatah-controlled security forces in Gaza with vastly superior weaponry in hopes they would "conquer Hamas in Gaza" - but Hamas routed Fatah in the fighting last week because of its "superior skills and discipline."
I was vehemently opposed to the government of Margaret Thatcher but I could not deny she was the democratic choice of the British people, much as I disagreed with their choice.
What is currently taking place in Palestine is the subjugation of the democratic process to the preferences of outside forces. And Carter has found the precise word for Bush and Olmert's actions.
Criminal.
Click title for source.
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7 comments:
Who is going to miss Fatah? I certainly won't.
Thanks for the link to that article. Therein lies the problem the US and Israel have by trying to prop up a leadership that the Palestinians have explicitly rejected.
The World According to Jimmy Carter
How funny! As usual, you use someone else to make your argument for you, but to choose Dershowitz? Is there a single person on the planet with a more one sided view of all things Israeli than the man who wrote a book called "The Case for Israel" and spends his spare time trying to have academics that disagree with him driven out of their posts?
Get Outta Here, Jason!
By the way, you would have learned a LOT more from reading some of the very insightful posts in the comments section than you ever would from reading Dershowitz's intellectually lazy and flawed article.
Much of what Dershowitz is saying is factually wrong, especially regarding Israel's relationship with South Africa at the time of Apartheid. But you would know that if you had taken time to read the counter arguments being aired beneath this vacuous article.
Banned Troll's comments deleted!
A typical tact by zealots such as yourself is to demonize the opposition and attempt to silence criticism.
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