Israel's colonisation of Palestine blocking peace, says Jimmy Carter [View All]

Chris McGreal in Jerusalem
Saturday March 18, 2006
The Guardian

The former US president Jimmy Carter has described Israel's "colonisation of Palestine" through expanding Jewish settlements as the single greatest obstacle to a resolution of the conflict.
Mr Carter, 81, who negotiated the 1978 Camp David peace accord between Israel and Egypt, wrote in the Tel Aviv newspaper Haaretz yesterday that Israel's actions doom any Palestinian state to a "dismal" future and will perpetuate violence across the Middle East. "The pre-eminent obstacle to peace is Israel's colonisation of Palestine," he wrote. "Israel's occupation of Palestine has obstructed a comprehensive peace agreement in the Holy Land, regardless of whether Palestinians had no formalised government, one headed by Yasser Arafat or Mahmoud Abbas, or with Abbas as president and Hamas controlling the parliament and cabinet."

Mr Carter also questioned Israel's commitment to the US-led "road map" peace process. "Israel has officially rejected its basic premises with patently unacceptable caveats and prerequisites," he said.

He said Israel was insincere at peace negotiations during the 1990s when it offered to withdraw only a small proportion of the 225,000 settlers living in the West Bank. "Their best official offer to the Palestinians was to withdraw 20% of them, leaving 180,000 in 209 settlements, covering about 5% of the occupied land," he said.

"The 5% figure is grossly misleading, with surrounding areas taken or earmarked for expansion, roadways joining settlements with each other and to Jerusalem, and wide arterial swaths providing water, sewage, electricity and communications. This intricate honeycomb divides the entire West Bank into multiple fragments, often uninhabitable or even unreachable."

This week the acting Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, said that if he wins this month's general election, as expected, he will annex the main settlement blocks that are home to about 80% of settlers.|

http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,1733742,00.html