By Saud Abu Ramadan and Jonathan Ferziger
June 16 (Bloomberg) -- Former President
Jimmy Carter urged the Gaza Strip’s Hamas leadership to join Middle East peace efforts and condemned Israel’s blockade of the territory, saying Palestinians are being treated like animals.
Carter toured sites around the territory today that were bombed during Israel’s military offensive that ended in January. He later met with Ismail Haniya, who heads the government in Gaza two years after Hamas seized control of the coastal enclave from the Palestinian Authority’s Fatah movement.
“Tragically, the international community too often ignores the cries for help and the citizens of Palestine are treated more like animals than like human beings,” Carter, 84, said in a speech to graduates of a United Nations school in Gaza.
The former president, who brokered an Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty in 1979, is traveling in the Middle East on his own initiative as head of the Atlanta-based
Carter Center, which promotes human rights, mediates international conflicts and fights disease in poor countries. He visited a West Bank Jewish settlement earlier in the week.
Anwar Sadat was killed because of the treaty by the same people that are running Egypt now.Israel has sealed off crossing points into Gaza and limited the entry of international food donations and construction materials, citing security concerns.
Carter said he urged Hamas to support efforts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, adding, “they have made statements and taken actions that suggest they are ready to join the peace process.
Haniya told Carter he would support establishing a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip if all the territory captured by Israel in 1967 is returned.
Independent State“We are pushing towards the dream of having our independent state with Jerusalem as its capital,” Haniya said, standing beside Carter at a press conference.
Jerusalem is the Capital of Israel and no arab muslim should be allowed in. Just like Mecca allows no non-muslims.Carter’s visit came a day after former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair toured Gaza in his role as international peace envoy. Blair refrained from meeting any leaders of Hamas, which is classified as a terrorist organization by Israel, the U.S. and the European Union.
Carter said earlier in the day that he almost cried when he saw the wreckage of the American School in the Gaza Strip and felt guilty because Israel used U.S.-made war planes to bomb the campus.
The arabs were firing mortars from the school. They are the ones that created this issue. “I have to hold back tears when I see the deliberate destruction that has been wracked against your people,” he told Palestinians today as he visited the school’s ruins in the northern Gaza town of Beit Lehiya.
American School
The American school, a private institution that is not affiliated with the U.S. government, was destroyed in a Jan. 3 air strike that killed a guard. The Israeli army said it targeted the campus because Palestinians were using the site to fire rockets at Israel’s southern towns and cities.
“I feel partially responsible for this, as must all Americans and Israelis,” Carter said, noting that the school was “deliberately destroyed by bombs from F-16s made in my country.”
Carter told reporters he would also seek the release of captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit and said he handed a letter from Shalit’s parents to Haniya asking that it be given to the captive.
Carter criticized Israel’s blockade of Gaza in an
interview published June 14 in the Haaretz newspaper, saying the Palestinians there were “being treated like savages.” Carter’s 2006 book, “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid,” irked Israeli politicians who objected to their leadership being compared to the racist policies of South Africa’s former government.
There is no such place as palestine. There are no palestinians. They have a country, Jordan. The Jews need to take Gaza and the West Bank and throw out all arabs.
