Carter: Trump plan ‘undercuts prospects for a just peace between Israelis and Palestinians’

Former President Jimmy Carter criticized President Trump’s Middle East plan Thursday saying it “undercuts prospects for a just peace between Israelis and Palestinians.”

Carter, in a released statement, said the plan breaks the two-state solution and the decided 1967 borders within a series of United Nations Security Council resolutions. The former president claimed the proposal would provide “fragmented statehood” to Palestine. 

“The new U.S. plan undercuts prospects for a just peace between Israelis and Palestinians. If implemented, the plan will doom the only viable solution to this long-running conflict, the two-state solution,” Carter said.

The former president also asserts that the proposal violates international law regarding self-determination, taking land by force and annexation of occupied territories. He took issue with the uncertainty of the future of parts of the West Bank and the phrasing determining Israel as “the nation state of the Jewish people,” saying it “encourages the denial of equal rights to Palestinians.” 

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter Denounces Middle East Proposal https://t.co/kzltUCmpJK

— The Carter Center (@CarterCenter) January 30, 2020

Trump presented his plan as a “realistic two-state solution,” but the Palestinians rejected it. The plan gives Israel the opportunity to annex settlements in the West Bank that Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called for. 

The plan would give Palestinians limited sovereignty after a transition period and allow them to establish its capital on the eastern side of the separation barrier in Jerusalem.

Carter has been a big proponent for Palestinian rights and a two-state solution, including when he organized the Camp David Accords with Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin.