The long road to recognising apartheid in Palestine

It is ironic that former US President Jimmy Carter should die at 100 and his funeral rites should take place during the remaining days of Joe Biden's presidency. Although a one-term Democrat president like Biden, Carter was respected, celebrated and, even, beloved, largely for post-presidency good deeds. Biden will not be highly regarded.

Born in 1924 in the tiny town of Plains Georgia, peanut farmer Carter served in the Georgia state senate and as state governor before running as a dark horse for US president at the age of 53 in 1976 and winning.

Biden was born in 1942 in the industrial city of Scranton, Pennsylvania, and aged 11 he moved to Wilmington, Delaware. After studying law, he launched his political career in 1972 as a senator. He failed to win the Democratic nomination for president in 1988 and 2008 but candidate Barack Obama chose Biden as running mate. Biden served as vice president from 2009-2017 and was elected president in 2020 at 79 years of age, defeating Republican Donald Trump.

During his 1977-1981 presidency Carter sought to recover the moral authority of his office following Richard Nixon's Watergate scandal and widespread urban racial unrest and escalating US involvement in the Vietnam war during Lyndon Johnson's term in office.

Carter promoted peace and reconciliation. He entered the White House as an energetic newcomer and strove to heal the rift in the country caused by the Vietnam war by decreeing amnesty to draft dodgers. He reformed the federal government, promoted green energy and appointed Blacks and women to his administration. He negotiated the Camp David Accords, which led to the 1979 peace treaty between Egypt and Israel, but failed to win support for the Middle East Framework, which was meant to accompany the treaty by ending Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and granting Palestinians political rights through autonomy.

Carter failed to secure re-election in 1980 due to domestic inflation and the crisis with Iran over US diplomatic and consular personnel detained in the US embassy in Tehran. He was succeeded by Republican Ronald Reagan who served two terms.

Elected after two failed bids, Biden enacted domestic legislation on recovery from the Covid pandemic and the post-Covid recession. He adopted infrastructure reconstruction and restored US membership in the 2016 Paris agreement on climate change from which Trump withdrew.

In August 2021, Biden was harshly criticised for mismanagement of the chaotic US withdrawal from Afghanistan under the surrender agreement Trump reached with the Afghan Taliban. This led to the Taliban's violent, catastrophic return to rule.

Having failed to secure peace in Afghanistan, Biden became a man of war. He joined NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in urging Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to go ahead with his country's application to join the Western alliance despite Russian President Vladimir Putin's vehement opposition. In late 2021, Putin marshalled troops along Russia's border with Ukraine and invaded in February 2002, launching a protracted war fuelled by US and European arms supplies to Ukraine.

A life-long self-proclaimed Zionist, Biden armed and funded Israel in its genocidal war on Gaza and repression of Palestinians in the West Bank. His last act in the White House was to propose $8 billion in weapons for Israel's war machine. Without Biden, Israel would not have been able to prosecute its longest ever war against the Palestinian people.

In April 2023, Biden declared his re-election bid and became the likely Democratic party's nominee but his disastrous performance in the June 27 presidential debate with Trump raised public concerns over his mental acuity and forced him to withdraw from the race on July 21. Biden endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris as the party's candidate. She lost to Trump, partly because she did not have time to campaign properly and partly because US voters are not mature enough to elect a woman to the presidency. Elderly, weary Biden leaves the presidency at 82 to retire to his homes in Delaware.

Carter stood down at 56 and became the best ex-president in US history by continuing to use the blessing force he gained in office to promote good causes. He established the Carter Presidential Centre with the aim of monitoring elections with the aim of encouraging free and fair polls and promoted conflict resolution. Carter helped African countries to increase agricultural yields by introducing new seeds, fertilizers, and new planting techniques. In 1985, he launched a campaign to eradicate the guinea worm which infected 3.5 million in 21 countries in Africa and Asia. Last year there were only 14 cases worldwide. He tackled other diseases in Africa such as river blindness and trachoma. He campaigned for equality for women, supported Habitat for Humanity and donned a hard hat and helped build homes for the homeless in poor neighbourhoods around the world.

In November 2006, he issued a controversial book entitled, "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid." Apartheid, a policy of unequal separation, was adopted in South Africa in 1948, outlawed by the UN in 1976 and abolished when South Africa elected its first non-racial government in 1994.

Carter's use of the word was offensive to Israelis and their friends. Criticism did not deter Carter from appearing on Israeli radio and stating, "When Israel does occupy ...territory deep within the West Bank, and connects the 200-or-so settlements with each other, with a road, and then prohibits the Palestinians from using that road, or in many cases even crossing the road, this perpetrates even worse instances of apartness, or apartheid, than we witnessed even in South Africa." He summed up the situation by saying, "Israel will never have peace until they agree to withdraw [from the territories]." He hoped it in vain that the book would stir debate within Israel and the US.

It took 15 years for Israeli rights organisation B'Tselem to catch up with Carter by applying the word "apartheid" to Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories. B'Tselem stated on January 12, 2021, “The Israeli regime enacts in all the territory it controls (Israeli sovereign territory, East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip) an apartheid regime. One organising principle lies at the base of a wide array of Israeli policies: advancing and perpetuating the supremacy of one group – Jews – over another – Palestinians." The application was adopted by Amnesty International in 2022 and gained currency. This opened the door to accusations by international rights organisations of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity during its ongoing war on Gaza. Carter should be credited with challenging Israel’s policies and uncritical defenders.