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| Carter [Ma'anImages] |
Bethlehem – Ma’an/Agencies – Former US President Jimmy Carter on Sunday condemned Israel’s “maltreatment of the people in Gaza, who are literally starving and have no hope at this time.”
“According to the UN 41,000 of their homes are either severely damaged or destroyed. And for five months they haven’t gotten a single sack of cement, or single sheet of plaster. They’re being treated like savages,” Carter said in an interview with the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
Asked what he was hoping to hear in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech later on Sunday evening, Carter said a commitment to “[t]he alleviation of their plight to some means I think would be the most important the Israeli PM could do.”
Carter was honored with the annual Palestine International Award for Excellence and Creativity on Saturday in Ramallah, where he said, “I have been in love with the Palestinian people for many years.” “I have two great-grandsons that are rapidly learning about the people here and the anguish and suffering and deprivation of human rights that you have experienced ever since 1948.”
The former American leader also vowed to fight, “as long as I live, to win your freedom, your independence, your sovereignty and a good life.”
He also called on the Palestinian government to reject the ongoing internal rivalry and embrace a unity government with Hamas, whose exiled leadership he met with on Thursday in Syria, where he said that a peace agreement with Israel would have to include the group.
“I don’t believe there is any possibility to have peace between Palestinians and Israel unless Hamas is involved directly, with Fatah,” Carter said after meeting Syrian President Bashar Al-Asad in Damascus, according to AFP.
The former president said he hoped Hamas would commit to the Arab Peace Initiative, which offers Israel normalized relations in exchange for a withdrawal to its pre-1967 borders.
Carter also said he expected current President Barack Obama would engage with Hamas if it forms a unity government with the rival Fatah movement under Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, according to DPA.
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