ATLANTA (ABP) — Former President Jimmy Carter is calling Israel’s 2-year-old blockade of Gaza an “atrocity” and saying people there are being treated like animals.
“Tragically, the international community largely ignores the cries for help, while the citizens of Gaza are being treated more like animals than human beings,” Carter said in a June 16 speech in Gaza.
 Former President Jimmy Carter greets Noam Shalit, father of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, held captive for almost three years in Gaza by Hamas. (Carter Center/D. Hakes) |
Speaking earlier at Cairo University, Carter said Palestinians in Gaza are being “starved to death” and are receiving fewer calories per day than people living in the poorest parts of Africa.
“It’s an atrocity what is being perpetrated as punishment on the people in Gaza,” Carter said, quoted in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. “It’s a crime…. I think it is an abomination that this continues to go on.”
Israel imposed the blockade two years ago when Hamas, an Islamist party that supports attacks on Israel, gained control over Gaza’s government. Fatah, the more moderate of the two main Palestinian parties, retained control of the West Bank territories.
Israel says its aim is to weaken Hamas, but critics say the blockade punishes Gaza’s civilians and increases anger toward Israel.
The United Nations said that, months after the end of hostilities, Israeli officials still are allowing nothing more than basic needs like food and medicine into Gaza.
Carter said he saw with his own eyes when a group of Israelis and Americans were stopped while trying to cross into Gaza with children’s toys and playground equipment. He said it is his understanding that even crayons and paper are treated as “security hazards” and not allowed to enter Gaza.
Carter called the blockade of Gaza a “siege” and the “starving of 1 1/2 million people of the necessities of life.”
“Never before in history has a large community been savaged by bombs and missiles and then deprived of the means to repair itself,” Carter said.
Carter is convener of a movement called the New Baptist Covenant launched in 2008 to unify Baptists in North America around common concerns like justice for the poor. In May Carter invited religious leaders to a two-day summit at the Carter Center to discuss a “growing sense of despair” in the Holy Land.
However, many strong supporters of Israel — including many conservatives in the United States — have been highly critical of Carter. He came under intense criticism from many Israel backers over his 2007 book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, for comparing Israel’s treatment of Palestinians living within its borders to the South African regime that kept that nation racially segregated until the 1980s.
Recently religious leaders, including several Baptists, signed a letter to President Obama warning that continuing strife threatened to wipe out a dwindling Palestinian Christian population in the land of Jesus’ birth.
In his speech in Gaza Carter, who brokered the historic 1979 peace treaty between Israel and Egypt, applauded Obama’s commitment to resume talks toward achieving a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
“Jerusalem must be shared with everyone who loves it — Christians, Jews, and Muslims,” Carter said.
Under pressure from the United States, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said for the first time June 14 that he supports a Palestinian state. But he insisted that it be demilitarized, that Jerusalem remain the undivided capital of Israel and that Palestinians must recognize Israel “as the nation of the Jewish people.”
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Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press. ABP Managing Editor Robert Marus contributed to this story.