Palestine - Peace Not Apartheid
by Jimmy Carter
Simon & Schuster, HK$143
Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz reckons Jimmy Carter's Palestine - Peace Not Apartheid to be a 'shallow and superficial', 'indecent', 'biased', 'anti-Israel screed'. This has been a controversial book, and more than one reviewer was hoping its notion that Americans often get only one side of the Arab-Israeli conflict would withstand assault. But the consensus is that Carter's book is 'weak', 'simplistic' and 'disappointing'. Despite protestations about the use of the word 'apartheid' in the title, it's not the first book to stick that label on Israeli policy. There is a lot worth reading here, in particular the treatment Arab Israelis and Palestinians receive at the hands of Israeli law. But Carter is clumsy - he makes mistakes with facts which are easily attacked - and his perspective, blinkered to the rather pointless provocation by some Palestinian elements, is too narrow. 'Israel's continued control and colonisation of Palestinian land have been the primary obstacles to a comprehensive peace agreement in the Holy Land,' Carter says. US political journal Foreign Affairs observed: 'That statement, so out of line with the way mainstream American political figures . . . frame the issue, ensures that the book will be attacked by many. Perhaps it will be read as well.'