When it comes to the topic of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, most of us will readily agree that the situation in Israel and the occupied territories is not encouraging. Where the agreement usually ends, however, is on the question of who is at fault. Where many in the United States are convinced that the problem is the refusal of Arab states to accept Israel as a neighbor, Palestinian supporters maintain that the problem is Israel’s occupation of Arab lands, and members of the American-Israeli lobby emphasize terrorism. In Palestine Peace Not Apartheid, President Jimmy Carter shares his intimate knowledge of the history of the conflict. The essence of his argument is that while there are disparities among the various treaties, settlements, and agreements signed in the Middle East, they possess common elements that can be consolidated and pursued as the basis for a lasting peace (205). Hence, he insists there is a formula for peace with justice that has the approval of most Palestinians and Israelis.
For example, while it is true that a major problem in the Middle East has been the failure of the Arab world to acknowledge Israel ’s right to exist, it does not necessarily follow that all Arab nations have chosen this path. President Carter reminds us that in the Camp David Accords, Egypt recognized Israel ’s right to exist. Moreover, the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and Jordan have recognized Israel . Indeed, at the Arab summit in 2002, most Arab nations accepted the permanent existence of Israel and offered peace and recognition.
On the other hand, there is the problem of Israel ’s acquisition of Palestinian land. The Camp David Accords, the framework for the Egyptian-Israeli peace agreement signed by Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin and officially ratified by both governments, affirmed a commitment by Egypt and Israel to honor UN Resolutions 242 and 338 (224). These resolutions prohibited the acquisition of land by force and called for Israel ’s withdrawal from the occupied territories. They were reaffirmed in President Reagan’s statement of 1982, the 1993 Oslo Agreement, the treaty between Israel and Jordan in 1994, the Arab peace proposal of 2002, the Geneva Initiative, and the International Quartet’s Roadmap. Consequently, there are agreements recognized by both Palestinians and Israelis that acknowledge Israel ’s right to exist and Palestinians’ right to the occupied territories.
Yet there are many Europeans, Australians, Canadians, and Americans, to name a few, who will challenge the view that all ingredients are available for peace. After all, many people believe that terrorism is the fundamental culprit. According to President Carter, the Palestinians have agreed to stop violence, and have demonstrated the ability to stop violent resistance in the territories. In the Oslo Agreement, the PLO “recognized the ‘right of the State of Israel to exist in peace and security’ and renounced terrorism and other acts of violence” (178). Even Hamas, in 2004, was able to implement and enforce a ceasefire with Israel and offered to enforce the ceasefire as long as Israel refrained from attacking Palestinians (184). “Of course this does not mean total peace” (180), Carter admits, acknowledging that total peace in any society is unlikely.
Given that all the ingredients for peace are available, why does the violence and turmoil continue? President Carter claims that “for more than a quarter-of-a-century, the actions of some Israeli leaders have been in direct conflict with the official policies of the United States, the international community, and their own negotiated agreements” (208). He maintains that “in order to achieve its goals, Israel has decided to avoid peace negotiations and to escape even the mild restraints of the United States by taking unilateral action, called ‘convergence’ or ‘realignment,’ to carve out for itself the choice portions of the West Bank” (210).
Although President Carter offers a solution to what seems an intractable problem, critics of the book have focused on the fact that he has had the temerity to suggest that Israel , not the Palestinians, is the problem. Moreover, he emphasizes that “most American citizens are unaware of the circumstances in the occupied territories” (209). The mainstream media in the United States , he reports, rarely questions or condemns Israeli government decisions. On account of these conclusions, many critics of the book have accused Carter of lying and of being an anti-Semite.[1]
Ultimately, I believe, a conclusion one ought to draw from President Carter’s book is one that he explicitly rejects. That is that Israel , either consciously or unconsciously, has constructed a web of racial projects, which are an obstacle in the path to peace. Carter says he is not “accusing Israel of racism nor referring to its treatment of Arabs within the country.” He insists: “I defined apartheid very carefully as ‘the forced segregation of one people by another’ on their own land.” He contends that, “The driving purpose for the forced separation of the two peoples [in Palestine] is unlike that in South Africa —not racism, but the acquisition of land" (190).[2] Nevertheless, the claim that he is not talking about racism or Israel ’s treatment of Arabs within the country does not fit the facts. He reports that when he visited Israel in 1990, he met with custodians of the Christian holy places who “were distressed by what they considered to be increasing abuse and unwarranted constraints imposed on them by the Israeli government” (126). Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin assured him that there “was no inclination to discriminate against Christians” (127). Rabin explained that “the formation of a majority government coalition required the support of smaller, deeply religious parties, and [one of] their primary demands [is] to have authority over all religious matters” (127). If minority religious parties are a key part of the government, does Jewishness rather than citizenship regulate the relationship between the individual and the state?[3] Unwittingly, are non-Jewish citizens of Israel , specifically, Christians, Palestinian Christians, and Muslim Arabs, marginalized and racialized?
Sociologist Steve Martinott focuses on and explores “the way race is produced and bestowed on people by institutional social actions.”[4] He argues that race is not simply a condition found in people. A person doesn’t wake up one day, look in the mirror, and discover that she is black, Asian, Italian, or Palestinian. Martinott, like Michael Omi and Howard Winant, insist that racial formation is the product of “a society suffused with racial projects, large and small to which all are subjected. Everybody learns some combination, some version, of the rules of racial classification, and of her own racial identity, often without obvious teaching or conscious inculcation.”[5] If these sociologists are correct, then one could see the involvement of religious parties in government; the collective punishment of Palestinians through the mass arrests of men, women, and children, and the punitive demolition of their homes; the segregation of highways; the confiscation of Palestinian vehicles; the establishment of streets that Palestinians are not allowed to walk on and streets they cannot cross as part of a web of racial projects that transform descriptive terms into racial terms that maintain social categorization and social control.
When I was in Palestine in 2005, I observed check points throughout the occupied territories—check points, walls, and fences that prevent children from going to school, adults from going to work, to the market, or to a hospital. How are we to understand the acquisition of Palestinian land that is transforming Palestinian farmers into day laborers working on land they once owned? Sociologist Ruth Frankenberg offers a spatial and urban interpretation of the politics of identity. She argues that the racial identities we form depend in large part on the map of the environment (the physical landscape, neighborhood, home, streets, and schools) we live in from day to day.[6] Where do I belong? What areas of the city are safe for me? Where do I feel uncomfortable, and why? An implication of Frankenberg’s treatment of the politics of identity is that there is a social geography of race that is transformative; it too sustains social categorization and social control. If Martinott and others are correct, it seems Israel , through institutional actions, is indeed involved in a racial project, a scheme or schemes that generate and support racialized identities.
My analysis puts forward one explanation as to why all the ingredients for peace may be available even as the violence and turmoil continues. It offers an additional reason why the issues appear so knotty. In the United States , for example, we have worked for more than a hundred years at disentangling our own web of racial projects and racialized identities with only partial success. Although I disagree with some of President Carter’s conclusions, I think the book is well worth reading. It offers a perspective on historical and current events, such as the Camp David Accords and the experiences of Palestinians, that one does not often get.