What Trump could learn from Jimmy Carter about the Middle East – The Forward

Former President Jimmy Carter and President-elect Donald Trump may not have much in common, but that doesn't mean there isn't common ground to be found. Photo by Mandel Ngan/AFP/Eva Marie Uzcategui/Getty Images)

Jérémie Ben-Ami January 3, 2025

Nearly 50 years ago, I spent a summer in high school volunteering for former President Jimmy Carter's presidential campaign. Carter, who died last weekend at the age of 100, was a controversial figure for some in the Jewish community, but a role model for me. He truly embodied what it means to lead a life dedicated to public service.

His legacy and teaching also extend to the central area of ​​my work, the search for peace in the Middle East. While it is fair to be skeptical that there will be any common ground between Carter and President-elect Donald Trump, there are a number of lessons learned from Carter's legacy that merit attention. taken into account by the new team.

History and peace between long-time enemies require leadership

The personal commitment of leaders willing to shape public opinion and not be intimidated by it is essential to changing history. Think of Nelson Mandela and Willem DeKlerk, who together charted the path to the end of apartheid in South Africa; or Mikhail Gorbachev and President Ronald Reagan, who laid the foundations for the end of the Cold War and a significant reduction in nuclear weapons.

Carter and his partners in seeking change, Israel's Menachem Begin and Egypt's Anwar Sadat, certainly all met during the 13 days of September 1978 when they gathered at Camp David to forge a peace pact between Israel and Egypt.

Today's American, Palestinian and Israeli leaders have recently been far too timid when it comes to finding a lasting peace solution. They have been far too limited by their sense of what they can do politically, rather than by what must be done for the good of their people and the future.

Hence the first lesson: Team Trump must strive to highlight and empower strong, visionary leaders at the regional and local levels who can change and shape public opinion. Who will be the Sadat of this generation, who left for Jerusalem in 1977 to relaunch the peace process? Trump has the ability to find and activate them, and he should do so.

The current issues and opportunities must be made explicit to the audiences concerned.

Carter had his biggest argument with the Jewish community and supporters of Israel over the title of his 2006 book Palestine: Peace, Not Apartheid.

I believe he came, over time, to understand how his choice to use the A-word served to shut down some of the conversations he hoped to spark, particularly for Jews around the world who had been in front line in the fight against apartheid in South Africa. , and could not conceive that this could be the future of their only beloved democracy in the Middle East.

But Carter was right about one thing: The stakes of Israel's approach to the Palestinians would define the future of the Jewish state, as became evident during the war in Gaza. Today, the “A” word is increasingly used, even by some Israelis and friends of the country, who increasingly see the crossroads Israel faces, Carter-style.

Whether Carter's choice of language was appropriate or not, he saw that Israel had a historic choice to make. The country cannot effectively control all the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea and remain a Jewish-majority democracy. There are now more non-Jews than Jews in this country. In the long term, Israel has only three options: give equal rights to all 15 million residents; accept a two-state solution; or give up on being a democracy and admit that millions of non-Jews will be permanently deprived of their rights.

If Israel chooses the path of a democracy of 15 million people, it will realistically lose much of its Jewish character. If it decides to grant all rights to a single ethnic group and fewer rights to others, it loses its democratic soul and with it, I would say, its Jewish soul.

This is the existential conundrum that Carter was trying to confront Israel's supporters after decades of working to resolve the conflict, both as president and during his later career. Nearly 20 years later, the choice he outlined must still be made; there is no way to escape it.

So the second lesson for the new administration is that a lasting peaceful resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will require friends outside the conflict to help the parties themselves see the existential choice they face between perpetual conflict and compromise. difficulties necessary for peace. .

Resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict requires regional engagement

A final piece of wisdom that President Carter could pass on to the new team is that there is no solution, no path to peace, without resolving the Palestinian question. Carter already knew this in the late 1970s, when he tried, unsuccessfully, to include meaningful Palestinian-related measures in the Sinai peace agreement.

Former President George HW Bush and his Secretary of State, James Baker, also understood this and convened the Madrid Conference, the first-ever meeting of all parties directly involved in the Arab-Israeli conflict. After Bush, former President Bill Clinton and his team made the decision to leave regional actors out of conversations between Israelis and Palestinians and I think that's one of the main reasons they couldn't. carry out the Oslo Accords at Camp David II in 2000.

Former President George W. Bush and his Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, attempted, albeit a little too late, to reengage regional partners in Annapolis in 2007, and Israeli Prime Minister Olmert continues today to promote the agreement resulting from this process.

Carter has been through it all. I was fortunate to be able to speak with him and his collaborators about some of these efforts. He regretted to the end that in 1978 and 1979 he was not able to get the Palestinian question addressed in a meaningful way within the framework of the Sinai agreement. He will continue to insist to his successors that there will be no way to end the conflict in the Middle East if the central issue of Palestinian rights is not addressed.

It would be good for the new Trump team to heed this advice as it considers how best to build on the Abraham Accords in a second term.

Unfortunately, Carter never realized his dream of seeing a just and peaceful end to the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. Nor has he had the opportunity to see what choice the modern State of Israel and the Jewish people will ultimately make at the crossroads he so controversially articulated in his 2006 book. But he leaves behind valuable lessons for those who hope, by following in his footsteps, to resolve this seemingly intractable conflict.

Jeremy Ben-Ami is the founder and president of J Street, a pro-Israel, pro-peace, and pro-democracy advocacy group.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Forward. Discover more perspectives in Opinion. To contact opinion authors, send an email [email protected].

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