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Factual Errors and Significant Omissions in Jimmy Carter’s “Palestine”

1. Former President Jimmy Carter claims throughout his book that the Palestinians have long supported a two-state solution and that it is the Israelis who have always opposed it.

What Are The Real Facts About a Two-State Solution?

• In 1937 the British Peel Commission Report recommended the partition of Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state. The Jews would have received a tiny strip of land running from Tel Aviv to Haifa and a little strip east of Haifa -- about 20% of what remained of Palestine. The rest would have become an Arab Palestinian state.

• The Twentieth Zionist Congress agreed in principle to partition. Palestinian Arabs rejected any kind of partition.

• U.N. Resolution 181 (November 29, 1947 ) called for the division of Palestine into a Jewish state, an Arab state, and an international zone for Jerusalem.

• The Jews accepted the partition. The Council of the Arab League (December 17, 1947) announced that it would prevent the proposed two state solution for Palestine by force.

• As a result of the 2000 Camp David and Taba talks, the Palestinians were offered all of Gaza, 95 percent of the West Bank (contiguous territory), 2 percent of pre-1967 Israel, a capital in East Jerusalem, 3/4 of the Old City and a $30 Billion fund to compensate refugees.

• Chairman Arafat turned it all down, and the 2d Initifada began.

2. President Carter ignores the history of Palestinian terrorism and claims that the initial violence in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict occurred when “Jewish militants” attacked Arabs in 1939.

What are The Real Facts about Palestinian Terrorism?

• There is a long history of anti-Jewish Palestinian terrorism. From 1922 through 1928 the relationship between Jews and Arabs in Palestine was relatively peaceful. But in late 1928 a new phase of violence began with minor disputes between Jews and Arabs about the right of Jews to pray at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. These arguments led to a serious outbreak of Arab violence in August 1929 when Haj Amin al-Husseini, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, ordered the slaughter of more than 100 rabbis, students, and other Jews. The Jews in Palestine responded to this violence by establishing a defense force -- the Haganah.

• In April 1936, riots broke out in Jaffa commencing a three-year period of violence and civil strife in Palestine that is known as the Arab Revolt. The Arab Higher Committee, headed by the Grand Mufti, led the campaign of terrorism against Jewish and British targets. This campaign of violence was quelled in the 1938-39 period by British forces in cooperation with the Haganah.

• The UN Partition Resolution of November 1947 sparked a wave Palestinian terrorism against Jewish targets in Palestine which rose steadily until it led to the Arab invasion of the nascent state of Israel in 1948-9.

• During the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, West Germany, five Palestinian terrorists (members of Black September) kidnaped and massacred 11 members of the Israeli Olympic team.

• There was a rash of Palestinian suicide bombings followed the signing of the Oslo Peace Accords in 1994.

• The Second Intifadah -- a wave of barbaric suicide bombing -- broke out on September 29, 2000 after Yasser Arafat walked out of the Camp David peace talks.

3. President Carter claims that the Clinton proposals at Camp David and Taba were so unacceptable and vague as to justify the Palestinian rejection.

What Are The Real Facts about Camp David?

• In the summer of 2000, Israeli P.M. Barak offered the Palestinians four clusters of territory on the West Bank. Yasser Arafat made no counteroffer and walked out of the Summit. As a matter of historical record, including that of Clinton himself in his memoir My Life and Dennis Ross, Clinton’s special envoy to the negotiations, five months later, President Clinton crafted a final proposal whereby the Palestinians would get all of Gaza and 97 percent of contiguous West Bank territory, a capital in east Jerusalem and a $30 Billion fund to compensate refugees. It was a clear and highly generous offer to the Palestinians.

• President Carter rewrote the history of Camp David in his book.

“Being a former President does not give one a unique privilege to invent information.”

Quote by Kenneth W. Stein, professor at Emory University and veteran Middle East scholar, upon his resignation from the Carter Center in Atlanta.