Jimmy Carter a hawk or a dove

As Americans mourn the death of former president Jimmy Carter, the disastrous impacts of his legacy, particularly in the Middle East are thrust into the limelight. Carter died at the age of 100 on Sunday, forty-four years after he left the White House. His tenure as the 39th US president began with his inauguration on January 20, 1977, and ended on January 20, 1981.

Undoubtedly, the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza and its brutal crimes in the West Bank, Lebanon and beyond are rooted in the policies pursued by Carter. Carter played a key role in aiding and abetting the Israeli apartheid regime by brokering a seemingly peace deal between Egypt and Israel in 1978. 

Then Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and then Egyptian president Anwar Sadat signed Camp David Accords on September 17, 1978, that led in the following year to a peace treaty between the two sides.  The agreements became known as the Camp David Accords because the negotiations took place at the US presidential retreat at Camp David, Maryland. 

The agreements were the first normalization deal between Israel and an Arab country. More than four decades on, it is crystal clear that the deals were a stab in the back of Palestinians and their cause. 

The Carter administration had painted a scenario to motivate Arab states to reduce their support for Palestine amid the Israeli occupation. He also wanted Arab leaders to consider their own interests separate from those of the Palestinians. So far, an overwhelming majority of the Arab public has not recognized Israel and remained opposed to normalizing ties with the regime.

Nonetheless, Carter’s political ploy led to the Abraham Accords. Despite rising sentiment against Israel’s atrocities against Palestinians, Donald Trump oversaw the signing of the Abraham Accords in 2020, which normalized relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain as well as Morocco. Sudan joined the US-brokered deal a year later. 

The normalization deals not only failed to improve the situation of Palestinians, but also strengthened Israel's resolve to intensify its apartheid practices. With no doubts, Israel’s recent brutal war on Lebanon and the war of genocide in Gaza are the results of US-brokered normalization deals that began in the Carter era.  

Proponents of Carter, who earned the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002, characterize him as a champion of peace and democracy. However, the negative consequences of his policies on the Palestinian and Lebanese populations suggest that he may be more accurately remembered as a hawkish president rather than a dovish one. An examination of his statements regarding Iran further clarifies the debate over whether he should be classified as a hawk or a dove.

Carter served one term as president and lost his reelection bid to Ronald Reagan. His successes eclipsed at the polls by a stagnant economy and the 1979 US embassy takeover in Tehran.

In November 1979, a group of university students took over the US embassy in the Iranian capital. They believed Washington had turned its embassy into a center of espionage against the newly established Islamic Republic. Consequently, dozens of American diplomats were taken captive for 444 days.

Carter made futile attempts to secure the release of the Americans. 

On April 25, 1980, the US revealed it had attempted a military operation known as Operation Eagle Claw to rescue the release of the captives. But the operation failed and eight US servicemen were killed and several others were injured.

Carter explicitly demonstrated his enmity toward Iran in an interview 10 years ago.   

“I could have been re-elected if I had taken military action against Iran. It would have shown that I was strong and resolute and manly. ... I could have wiped Iran off the map with the weapons that we had,” he said in a 2014 interview with CNBC.

In the interview, Carter acknowledged his aspiration to entirely obliterate Iran, yet he had found himself unable to achieve this dream either through military or political means.

Courtesy: Tehran Times

 

Anti Israel sentiment sweeping Egypt

Public sentiments against Israel have been growing among Egyptian people since the Tel Aviv launched war on the Gaza Strip on October 07, 2023.

The recent deaths of two Egyptian soldiers at the hands of Israeli troops have fueled considerable resentment against the Zionist regime. 

Abdallah Ramadan was killed in an exchange of fire between Egyptian and Israeli forces near the Rafah Border Crossing in the southern Gaza Strip on Monday. Ibrahim Islam Abdelrazzaq, the other soldier, later succumbed to the injuries he sustained in the gun battle.

Their deaths also sparked anger on social media platforms, the only window for freedom of speech in the Arab country. Many social media users called the soldiers martyrs and heroes who have sacrificed their lives to defend the country. 

They blamed the Egyptian army for not organizing full military funerals for the slain soldiers.  

This came amid heightened tensions between Cairo and Tel Aviv after the Israeli army took control of the Gazan side of the Rafah Crossing on May 07 following a ground assault on the city. 

More than half of Gaza’s 2.3 population had been crammed into Rafah before Israel carried out an incursion into the city and took control of a buffer zone along the border between the strip and Egypt.

According to the UN, over one million people have fled Gaza since Israel’s assault on the city nearly a month ago. 

Egypt has already issued a stern warning to Israel over the Rafah offensive amid reports that the regime seeks to forcibly transfer Gaza’s population to the Sinai Peninsula. 

The recent gun battle incident has plunged relations between Egypt and Israel to a new low.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Egypt told Israel it will not hesitate to respond militarily if it feels its security has been threatened.

Egypt says the Israeli military presence in the Gaza buffer zone appears to violate the Camp David Accords of 1978, the US-brokered agreements that led to a peace treaty between Cairo and Tel Aviv a year later. 

Following Israel’s incursion into Rafah, reports suggested that Egypt had threatened to suspend the treaty if the Rafah offensive continued. 

Egypt has also announced it will formally join the case filed by South Africa against Israel at the International Court of Justice, which accuses the regime of genocide in the Gaza Strip. 

Israel says its offensive in Rafah, which has sparked global condemnation, is in line with its efforts to achieve total victory over Hamas and destroy the resistance group. 

This dream has remained elusive in the face of growing support for the Palestinian resistance. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has also been accused of seeking to prolong the war for his political purposes.  

In the meantime, the gun battle between the Israeli and Egyptian forces clearly indicates that the Netanyahu regime does not scruple to violate the accords that Tel Aviv signed with Cairo 45 years ago, for its military and political goals. 

Israel has also signed normalization deals with some Arab states over the recent past years. Palestinians have called these agreements a stab in the back of the Palestinian people and their cause. 

People in Egypt and other Arab countries that have normalized ties with Israel regard Israel as their number one enemy. 

Such resentment and Israel’s warmongering attitude toward Egyptian forces should serve as a red flag for states seeking to build relationships with the regime. 

Israel is an apartheid regime that has butchered more than 36,000 Palestinians in the nearly eight-month-old war on Gaza. Normalization deals cannot change the savage nature of Israel. As the saying goes, a leopard cannot change its spots!