Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter: "I Don't Consider... I Wasn't Equating Palestinian Missiles with Terrorism"

Following are excerpts from an interview with former U.S. president Jimmy Carter, which aired on Al-Jazeera TV on January 14, 2007.

Jimmy Carter: Most of the condemnations of my book came from Jewish American organizations, which think that I believe there is racial segregation inside Israel. I don’t base it on that. My whole book is written about Palestine and its lands, and about what is going on against the Palestinian people, which is, in my view, very similar, and in some cases even worse, than what happened to the blacks in South Africa.

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I don’t consider... I wasn’t equating the Palestinian missiles with terrorism. But when the Palestinians commit terrorist acts, and I mean when a person blows himself up within a bus full of civilians, or when the target of the operation is women and children – such acts create a rejection of the Palestinians among those who care about them. It turns the world away from sympathy and support for the Palestinian people. That’s why I said that acts of terrorism like I just described are suicidal for the popularity and support for the Palestinian cause. In my book, I talk about violence from both sides, and I describe very carefully and accurately the number of casualties among Palestinians and Israelis, including children. The number of Palestinian children who died because of the violence is five times greater than the number of Israeli children, and I condemn this kind of violence on both sides.

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Last January, after the elections were over and Hamas won, I went to London to meet the International Quartet. I urged them not to impose any kind of economic sanctions against the Palestinian people, but they decided to do so. When alternatives were proposed by the Arab countries and by the United Nations, the U.S. rejected the alternatives, and [refused] to transfer money to the Palestinians.

Interviewer: Why, in your opinion?

Jimmy Carter: I think the reason is that the U.S. wants to topple Hamas and [believes] that if it punishes the Palestinian people severely, the Palestinians will have to change their minds. I don’t know how true this is, but it’s not legal, proper, or morally right to deprive an entire people of the basic necessities of life, because they participated in a democratic process and voted freely.