Former US President Jimmy Carter said Friday that the United States must play a critical and constructive role in establishing peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians, while noting that the Palestinian people have been increasingly denied their basic human rights since the Camp David Accords.

Speaking of his first meeting with then-Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, Carter said, "I found that the American president has a great influence over the leaders of Israel."  "That holds and it's a great opening," he added.
To this end, Carter expressed the hope that US President-elect Barack Obama would play a proactive and just role in solving the 60-year-old conflict.

Carter, closing out a five-day visit to Beirut, delivered his remarks Friday night at the American University of Beirut's Issam Fares Hall as part of the Distinguished Peacemakers lecture series. The speech was devoted to analyzing the present state of the peace process 30 years after the historic Camp David Accords, of which he was chief architect, between Israel's Begin and then-Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.  Carter spoke briefly and anecdotally about his time in office, and focused the majority of his words on the current situation and recent failures in the peace process.  He said that a majority of Israelis seek a just and lasting peace with the Palestinians, but he also detailed the gravity of the suffering of Palestinians in the Occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip over the last three decades.

Camp David, he said, succeeded in establishing peace between Egypt and Israel, but provisions within the agreement protecting the basic rights of Palestinians, he added, have been largely ignored.  "Almost steadily since that time [1979], Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza have seen their basic human rights lost," he said.  He added that since the Hamas victory in the parliamentary elections held in 2006, "the Israelis have not been willing to negotiate in good faith with the Palestinians."

Carter also highlighted America's role in Arab-Israeli negotiations, accusing his successor, President Ronald Reagan, of inaction on the issue while praising President Bill Clinton's "efforts." He voiced profound disappointment with sitting President George W. Bush's treatment of the conflict. "President Bush, for six years, did not orchestrate one day of negotiations," Carter said.  He also noted that since Bush's Annapolis peace summit last year, many more illegal checkpoints and Israeli settlements have been erected in the Occupied West Bank.  "The stranglehold on the Palestinians is increasing," Carter said.

He added that if current Israeli policies - like the construction of the West Bank separation wall and the confiscation of Palestinian lands - continued, the Occupied West Bank would be a "prison," like Gaza, made of various "cantonments."
Carter called Israeli policies in the Occupied West Bank an international crime.  But he appeared optimistic over the election of Obama and his potential influence on regional peace. He said that Obama had privately assured him that he would not wait until his last year in office - as Bush did - to begin talks.  Carter added that he was disturbed by Obama's pro-Israeli comments to a Zionist lobby group last summer, but, sounding a note of hope, said he saw no reason to doubt the incoming president's commitment.  He also lauded the evolution of the democratic process in the Occupied West Bank and Gaza. Of the 72 elections that the Carter Center - Carter's non-profit human rights organization - had observed, he said, "the most perfect three were the ones conducted by the Palestinians."

Carter called the parliamentary polls in 2006, which Hamas won, "a completely open, honest and fair contest." He said future peace negotiations will rest heavily on international participation and proposals, including the US government, UN resolutions, the Quartet, and the Arab Peace Initiative. Members of the Quartet, Carter said, had "abandoned their responsibilities." Regardless of serial failure to resolve the conflict, Carter, invoking his strong Christian faith, expressed hope and confidence that "we [will] all see what we're praying for and that's peace in God's world."