Palestine Peace Not Apartheid (3)

By Jimmy Carter
Palestine Peace Not Apartheid - part 1
Palestine Peace Not Apartheid - part 2

The Israeli Apartheid - part 1

(When visiting King Hussein in 1983)
Hussein emphasized to us that about 12,000 Palestinians a year were being induced or forced to leave their ancestral homes and move east, either into Jordan or to join the many wandering refugees in other countries.
...They [King Hussein and his brother Crown Prince Hassan] showed me statistics to prove that water resources from the upper Jordan River valley were being channeled almost exclusively to Israelis and that Arabs were even prohibited from digging a new well or deepening an old one dried up by adjacent wells being dug by Jewish set­tlers. They condemned Israel's policy of forbidding the deliv­ery of foreign aid through Amman to the West Bank and Gaza for such projects as education, housing, and agriculture.
We had already heard most of these complaints from those living in the West Bank and Gaza, but now we were presented with color photographs, bar graphs, pages of statistics, and official documents.
Palestine Peace Not Apartheid, page 86-87.

(During Carter's and his wife's Rosalynn's regular visits to the Middle East in the first ten years after leaving the White House)
Some[Palestinians] showed us the wreckage of their former homes, which had been demolished by Israeli bulldozers and dyna­mite, with claims by Israel that they had been built too near Israeli settlements, on property needed by the Israeli gov­ernment, or that some member of the family was a security threat.
In assessing these claims, the Israeli human rights organ­ization B'Tselem explained that, on average, twelve innocent families lost their homes for every person accused of partici­pation in attacks against Israelis, with almost half of the de­molished homes never occupied by anyone suspected of involvement in any violent act against Israel, even throwing stones.
Palestine Peace Not Apartheid, page 116.

Many Palestinians emphasized that they were deprived of their most basic human rights. They could not assemble peacefully, travel without restrictions, or own property with­out fear of its being confiscated by a multitude of legal ruses. As a people, they were branded by Israeli officials as terror­ists, and even minor expressions of displeasure brought the most severe punishment from the military authorities. They claimed that their people were arrested and held without trial for extended periods, some tortured in attempts to force confessions, a number executed, and their trials often held with their accusers acting as judges. Their own lawyers were not permitted to defend them in the Israeli courts, and ap­peals were costly, long delayed, and usually fruitless.
They claimed that any demonstration against Israeli abuses resulted in mass arrests of Palestinians, including children throwing stones, bystanders who were not involved, families of protesters, and those known to make disparaging statements about the occupation. Once incarcerated, they had little hope for a fair trial and often had no access to their families or legal counsel. If they were presented with charges, the alleged crimes were usually described in very general terms equivalent to "disturbing the peace," and the sentences were often indefinite. Most of the cases were tried in military tribunals, but 90 percent of the inmates were being held in civilian jails. They pointed out that this policy of holding thousands of prisoners touched almost every Pales­tinian family and was a major source of festering resentment.
Palestine Peace Not Apartheid, page 118.


To be continued...
Pictures, maps and titles in this article are not from the book "Peace Not Apartheid".