International gains

Former US President Jimmy Carter’s obituaries have largely ignored his progressive domestic record in office and lauded him as the best-ex-president the US ever had thanks to his post-White House services to the country and international community.

After his inauguration in January 1977, Carter sought to restore moral leadership in the wake of the corrupted Johnson and Nixon administrations. He attempted to heal the rift in the country caused by the Vietnam war by decreeing amnesty for US opponents to the war who broke the law. He reformed the federal bureaucracy, secured Congressional approval for his legislative programme, and was the first president to promote renewal energy. He recruited Blacks and women for his administration and created a national department of education.

On the foreign front, his administration failed to recognise the weakness of Iran’s shah and when he was overthrown to come to terms with the anti-US clerical revolution led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Over the past 46 years, Carter’s successors have refused to reach a modus vivendi with Tehran although Iranian reformist presidents have called for dialogue.

Carter was praised for negotiating the Camp David Accords which culminated in the 1979 peace treaty between Egypt and Israel. The treaty led to Egypt’s departure from the Arab Front, neutralised of the Egyptian army and deprived the Arabs of deterrence against Israeli attack. Until then, the slogan on which the Arabs relied was, “There can be no war with Israel without Egypt, and no peace without Syria.” The Arabs responded to the separate Egypt-Israel treaty by ending funding for Egypt as a front-line state, suspending Egypt from the Arab League and shifting League headquarters from Cairo to Tunis.

Carter did not condition the Egypt-Israel treaty on the adoption of the Middle East Framework, the Siamese twin of Egypt-Israel deal. Although flawed, the Framework was intended to end Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and grant Palestinians recognition of their rights. These were to be realised by undefined “autonomy” rather than the creation of a Palestinian state which Israel still rejects.

The Framework was opposed by Israel which had no intention of withdrawing from territory occupied in 1967 as well as the UN General Assembly since it did not involve implementation of UN resolutions on Palestinian rights of return, national independence and sovereignty. On Dec. 6, 1979, the Assembly condemned partial agreements and separate treaties that did not deliver Palestinian rights and a comprehensive peace deal. At that time, there were 20,000-25,000 illegal Israeli settlers in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza. Therefore, the moment was propitious for an agreement acceptable to the UN, the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), and the Arabs.

Israel followed up the deal with Egypt by boosting illegal settlements, invading Lebanon in 1982, 2006, and 2024, repeatedly attacking Gaza, assassinating Palestinian leaders, and conducting drone and air strikes in Iran, Lebanon, and Syria. The region has known little peace and stability since 1979.

While Israel withdrew from Sinai and made peace with Egypt, it is not clear whether Carter admitted to himself that the Camp David deal was not a success. However, he belatedly castigated Israel’s occupation regime in speeches and articles. During a meeting with me and two other journalists in Bethlehem following his monitoring team’s report on the January 2006 Palestinian legislative election, Carter said Israel could be “racist.”

In November 2006, he issued a controversial book entitled, “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.” His use of the word “apartheid” was bitterly offensive to Israelis and their friends. In a broadcast on Israel radio about the book, Carter stated, “When Israel does occupy... territory deep within the West Bank, and connects the 200-or-so settlements with each other, with a road, and then prohibits the Palestinians from using that road, or in many cases even crossing the road, this perpetrates even worse instances of apartness, or apartheid, than we witnessed even in South Africa.” He added, “Israel will never have peace until they agree to withdraw [from the territories].”

He also said he hoped his book would “at least stimulate a debate which has not existed in this country. There’s never been any debate on this issue of any significance.” This remains to be the case in the US.

Carter’s use of apartheid was prescient. It was adopted 15 years later by Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem which stated on Jan. 12, 2021, “The Israeli regime enacts in all the territory it controls (Israeli sovereign territory, East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip) an apartheid regime. One organizing principle lies at the base of a wide array of Israeli policies: advancing and perpetuating the supremacy of one group – Jews – over another – Palestinians.” B’Tselem praised Amnesty International as the first international rights group to adopt the term in 2022. Apartheid was legislated in South Africa in 1948, outlawed by the UN in 1976 and abolished by South Africa when it elected its first non-racial government in 1994.

Carter did not confine post-presidential interventions to the Palestine issue. He established the Carter Presidential Centre with the aim of monitoring elections and promoting conflict resolution. Carter Centre monitoring teams encouraged free and fair elections around the world. After monitoring the 1989 Panama election during the rule of military dictator Manuel Noreiga, he declared it “fraudulent” and said, “The will of the Panamanian people has been robbed.” Noreiga was subsequently toppled and arrested by the US. In 2009, during his press conference on the chaotic Lebanese parliamentary election, I asked Carter which elections he found to be most free and fair. He replied, “The Palestinian [legislative] elections in 1996 and 2006.”

Carter helped African countries wo increase agricultural yields by introducing selected seed, fertilizer and new planting techniques. In 1985, he launched a campaign to eradicate the parasitic guinea worm which infected 3,5 million in 21 countries in Africa and Asia. Last year there were only 14 cases worldwide. He tackled other diseases in Africa such as river blindness and trachoma. He campaigned for equality for women. He not only backed the Habitat for Humanity NGO but donned a hard hat and helped build homes for the homeless in poor neighbourhoods the world over.

Former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown summed up Carter by saying that during the decades following his presidency, “in so many ways he set a new standard, redefining perhaps how we can and should think about achievement.” Brown predicted Carter “will be celebrated long after the lives of many other presidents are forgotten.”

Photo: TNS