Thursday, January 9, 2025

Carter's Egyptian-Israeli "Peace"

The Egyptian-Israeli "peace" that Carter negotiated was the death warrant for Lebanon. By removing Egypt - the strongest Arab military - from the anti-Israel alliance, it guaranteed Israel a free-hand in the North, where the Jewish state had had plans to attack dating back to the 1950s. Once Carter helped secure Israel's southern flank, Menachem Begin was free to attack Lebanon, which he promptly did, culminating in the June 1982 invasion (on a surge of Pentagon arms imports), that devastated that country and convinced a young Osama bin Laden that only mass murder of Americans would ever change U.S. Middle East policy. In his memoirs Born Again Christian Carter described Israel as "ordained by God," while he admitted to having no special affinity for the Arab countries. So he was very much not a neutral arbiter from the start.*

The Palestine Liberation Organization, the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people at the time, was excluded from the negotiations, guaranteeing that peace would not be forthcoming. To retrospectively describe this guarantee of further war as an achievement of peace is revisionist history that does not accord with the facts, though, of course, it does accord with U.S.-Israeli doctrinal fantasies. But we shouldn't be supporting those.


*Golda Meir was amazed to witness Carter's credulous belief in the Bible as a source of historical insight on a visit to the Holy Land in 1973, and laughed right in his face. See Lawrence Wright, "Thirteen Days In September - Carter, Begin, and Sadat At Camp David," (Knopf, 2014) p. 6

For more detail on Carter as president see, "Jimmy Carter Dies, Leaves Horrifying Legacy," Legalienate, December 29, 2004


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