Punishing The Innocent Is A Crime
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Courtesy Of: The Carter Center
By Former President Jimmy Carter
7 May 2006

Innocent Palestinian people are being treated like animals, with the presumption that they are guilty of some crime. Because they voted for candidates who are members of Hamas, the United States government has become the driving force behind an apparently effective scheme of depriving the general public of income, access to the outside world and the necessities of life.

...Public opinion polls conducted after the January parliamentary election show that 80 persent of Palestinians want a peace agreement with Israel based on the International Road Map premises...

It is almost a miracle that the Palestinians have been able to orchestrate three elections during the past 10 years, all of which have been honest, fair, strongly contested, without violence and with the results accepted by winners and losers.

Among th 62 elections that have been monitored by us at the Carter Center, these are among the best in portraying the will of the people.

...With all their faults, Hamas leaders have continued to honor a temporary cease-fire, or Hudna, during the past 18 months, and their spokesman told me that this "Can be extended for two, 10 or even 50 years if Israel will reciprocate."

Although Hamas leaders have refused to recognize the state of Israel while their territory is being occupied, Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh has expressed approval for peace talks between Abbas and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel.

He added that if these negotiations resulted in an agreement that can be accepted by Palestinians, then the Hamas position regarding Israel would be changed.

Regardless of these intricate and long-term political interrelationships, it is unconscionable for Israel, the United States and others under their influence to continue punishing the innocent and already persecuted people of Palestine.

The Israelis are withholding approximately $55 million a month in taxes and customs duties that, without dispute, belong to the Palestinians.

Although some Arab nations have allocated funds for humanitarian purposes to alleviate human suffering, the U.S. government is threatening the financial existence of any Jordanian or other bank that dares to transfer this assistance into Palestine.

There is no way to predict what will happen in Palestine, but it would be a tragedy for the international community to abandon the hope that a peaceful coexistence of two states in the Holy Land is possible.

Like Egypt and all other Arab nations before the Camp David accords of 1978, and the Palsetinian Liberation Organization before the Oslo peace agreement of 1993, Hamas has so far refused to recognize the sovereign state of Israel as legitimate, with a right to live in peace.

This is a matter of great concern to all of us, and the international community needs to probe for an acceptable way out of this quagmire.

There is no doubt that the Israelis and Palestinians both want a durable two-state solution, but depriving the people of Palestine of their basic human rights Just to punish their elected leaders is not a path to peace.

Source:
http://cartercenter.org/doc2337.htm