Jimmy Carter Calls for Palestinian Elections Following Visit to Ramallah
Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter completed a three-day visit to Israel and the West Bank without meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Reuven Rivlin.
Carter and a delegation from the Elders, an international group of elder statesmen who advance peace and reconciliation, also had planned to visit Gaza, but cancelled that visit at the last minute, despite Israel’s agreement to allow him to cross the border to the coastal strip.
Carter did meet with former Israeli president Shimon Peres, however.
Israeli media had reported that Netanyahu and Rivlin turned down requests for meetings due to Carter’s anti-Israel stances; Carter reportedly said he did not request meetings because he knew he would be turned down.
During a meeting Saturday with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, Carter called for Palestinian parliamentary and presidential elections in the West Bank and Gaza to reunify the Palestinians, Abbas has remained in office despite his term ending in 2009, due to the lack of an election. Abbas’ Fatah Party and Hamas signed a unity agreement last year,
“We hope that sometime we’ll see elections all over the Palestinian area and east Jerusalem and Gaza and also in the West Bank,” he said Saturday in Ramallah.
Carter called the lack of reconstruction in Gaza following Israel’s operation there last summer “intolerable.”
“Eight months after a devastating war, not one destroyed house has been rebuilt, and people cannot live with the respect and dignity they deserve,” he said.
Carter, who wrote a book titled “Palestine: Peace not Apartheid,” has called for the labeling of goods that originate in the West Bank, and said that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was among the factors that led to the deadly attacks in January in Paris.
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.
In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.
At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.
Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we need 500 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Our Goal: 500 gifts during our Passover Pledge Drive!