By ASSOCIATED PRESS
NEW YORK
Former President Jimmy Carter said Monday that Israel will face a "catastrophe" unless it revives the Middle East peace process and establishes an independent Palestinian state.
Former US president Jimmy Carter
Photo: AP
Carter pointed out in an interview with The Associated Press on Monday that Arabs will outnumber Jews in the Holy Land in the foreseeable future.
"If we look toward a one-state solution, which seems to be the trend - I hope not inexorable - it would be a catastrophe for Israel, because there would be only three options in that case," Carter said.
Those would be to expel large numbers of Palestinians, deprive the Palestinians of equal voting rights, or to give them equal voting rights and therefore the majority, he said. "And you would no longer have a Jewish state," Carter predicted.
"The basic decisions would be made by the Palestinians, who would almost very likely vote in a bloc, whereas you would have some sharp divisions among the Israelis, because the Israelis always have different points of view," he said.
On the other hand, the other two options would amount to "ethnic cleansing" in the first case, or "apartheid" in the second.
Carter's wording was not new. His 2006 book, "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid," provoked a hail of criticism, particularly from Jewish-Americans who felt it unfairly compared Israeli treatment of Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza to the legalized racial oppression that once existed in South Africa.
Carter spoke to The Associated Press as his new book, "We Can Have Peace in the Holy Land," was released.
Carter still believes a two-state solution is the best option, with Israel's right to exist in peace being recognized by all its Arab neighbors, and Israel withdrawing from most of the land it captured in the 1967 Arab-Israeli War to create an independent Palestine.
This is "almost completely compatible" with UN resolutions, US official policy, and an Arab peace proposal that called for a land-for-peace swap, Carter said.
A complete return to the 1967 border would be impossible, he said, but Israel should swap some land to the Palestinians, either east of the Gaza Strip or in a corridor between the Gaza and the West Bank.
This corridor "would still be controlled by Israel, but it would give a passageway for Palestinians to go back and forth between the two parts of their county," from Gaza to the West Bank, he said.
Carter brokered the Camp David peace accord between Israel and Egypt 30 years ago, and received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.
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