YET MORE CRITICISM OF JIMMY CARTER AND HIS NEW BOOK

Don't Play with Maps - Dennis Ross
Former President Jimmy Carter's recent book badly misrepresents the Middle East proposals advanced by President Bill Clinton in 2000. Carter juxtaposes two maps labeled the "Palestinian Interpretation of Clinton's Proposal 2000" and "Israeli Interpretation of Clinton's Proposal 2000." The problem is that the "Palestinian interpretation" is actually taken from an Israeli map presented during the Camp David summit meeting in July 2000, while the "Israeli interpretation" is an approximation of what President Clinton subsequently proposed in December of that year.

The Clinton proposals in December 2000 were American ideas, and I was the principal author of them. I know what they were and so do the parties. It is certainly legitimate to debate whether President Clinton's proposal could have settled the conflict. It is not legitimate, however, to rewrite history and misrepresent what the Clinton ideas were. (New York Times)

See also A Strange Little Book by Jimmy Carter - Ethan Bronner
Whether or not Carter is right that most Americans have a distorted view of the conflict, his contribution is to offer a distortion of his own. Yasser Arafat is portrayed as someone who disavowed terrorism. Hafez al-Assad, who was president of Syria until 2000 when he died and his son took over, is quoted for an entire section, offering harsh impressions of Israel, including the opinion that it "initiated the 1967 war in order to take even more Arab land." Carter does not contradict him.

For the most radical leaders of the Muslim world - and their numbers are not dwindling - settling the Israel question does not mean an equitable division of land between Israel and Palestine. It means eliminating Israel. (New York Times)