Waging Peace:  Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter has been committed to peace in the Middle East since his White House administration. In the following decades, President Carter and The Carter Center have worked to support a viable two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and to promote comprehensive peace in the region and justice in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. The Center's activities aim to bring about sustainable peace between Israel, its neighbors, and other regional actors, including fostering inclusive democratic societies and advancing human rights, accountability, and rule of law.

In the Middle East, the primary focus of The Carter Center is the resolution of a series of five interlocking conflicts.  These include the Israeli-Palestinian, Israeli-Syrian, and Israeli-Lebanese conflicts as well as the conflicts within Lebanon and within the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

The Carter Center's Current Activities

The Carter Center works both at the grass roots and with high-level decision makers in its efforts to further conflict resolution, human rights, and democratic development in the Middle East.  In 2005, The Carter Center opened field offices in Ramallah and expanded in 2008 to Jerusalem and Gaza to monitor the political situation in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory, focusing on:

Conflict Mitigation | Human Rights | Electoral Developments and Reform

Key Current Issues

The Gaza Strip and Palestinian Unity | Hamas | Settlements

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Conflict Mitigation

Building on the Center's field presence and the continuous conflict-monitoring conducted by staff and interns in the Atlanta headquarters, senior Carter Center staff make regular trips to the Middle East to assess developments firsthand. These visits include meetings with government officials, members of key political parties, United Nations and nongovernmental organization leaders, and independent analysts. In particular, Center staff maintain regular contact with leaders in Fatah and Hamas. The Carter Center also works with Israeli and Palestinian peace activists, human rights organizations, and think tanks.
This thorough monitoring allows The Carter Center to be alert to various possible avenues of intervention. In some cases, this can include President Carter's personal intervention to push the parties toward a resolution. For example, in April 2008, President Carter narrowed the distance between Hamas and Israel on the truce in and around Gaza, convincing Hamas to drop its requirement that a truce in Gaza be tied to a truce in the West Bank, thus making the June 2008 cease-fire possible.  The Carter Center's work on Palestinian reconciliation also contributed indirectly to the Fatah-Hamas agreement reached in May 2011. Read full text >

Human Rights

The Carter Center's Human Rights Program actively pursues a two-pronged approach to facilitate constructive U.S. engagement in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory. First, it provides Israeli and Palestinian human rights defenders the opportunity to inform senior policymakers through firsthand, credible information about ongoing human rights violations that pose a threat to peace and justice for all residents of the region.

In November 2011, the program also supported public events with Palestinian activists engaged in nonviolent protests against the confiscation of Palestinian land in the West Bank, including a panel discussion with Manal Tamimi, a leader of the weekly protests against settlement encroachment on the village Nabi Saleh. Also on the panel was the Rev. Dr. Bernard Lafayette, original Freedom Rider; co-founder of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in 1960; and distinguished senior scholar in residence, Candler School of Theology at Emory University.  The panel was moderated by Karin Ryan, director of the Human Rights Program. Read full text >

Electoral Developments and Reform

In 2009, The Carter Center, in cooperation with The Arab Thought Forum and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), initiated an electoral reform project in Palestine. This project provided a unique forum for political party representatives and civil society members to discuss electoral reform in Palestine and was the only platform for dialogue between the political parties, including Fatah and Hamas, outside the Cairo reconciliation discussions. The project built consensus on critical electoral reforms by facilitating dialogue between key stakeholders as well as promoting constructive public debate on various issues, including the overall design of the electoral system, quotas for minorities and women, and measures to facilitate voting in East Jerusalem.

Increased dialogue and debate also aimed to contribute to broader efforts to initiate political reconciliation of the major Palestinian political parties. Expanding on this project, The Carter Center and the UNDP launched the Initiative on Dialogue, Consensus Building, and Civic Awareness in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (IDCC) in August 2010. In addition to conflict resolution activities, this project specifically aims to support further electoral reform and democratic governance by building consensus on steps to regularize interim appointments to municipal councils and enhancing Palestinian electoral dispute resolution. A project steering committee, composed of leaders from several Palestinian political parties, was a key element in the initial electoral reform project. The committee has continued to support these activities through IDCC, meeting on a periodic basis to discuss and help build political consensus around these efforts. Read full
text >

Election Reports

View Carter Center Palestinian election reports >

Key Current Issues

The Gaza Strip and Palestinian Unity
Hamas won a majority of parliamentary seats in the 2006 Palestinian Authority Legislative Council election in a poll that The Carter Center reported as one of the most democratic it has observed.
Read Preliminary Statement of the NDI/Carter Center International Observer Delegation to the Palestinian Legislative Council Elections, Jan. 26, 2006.
Subsequently, Israel and the West boycotted the Hamas-led government because of its designation as a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union. Clashes between Palestine's two leading political forces — Fatah and Hamas — escalated until June 2007, when Hamas took military control of the Gaza Strip, routing Fatah-backed security forces. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas immediately announced a new emergency government that excluded Hamas. The international community responded by channeling funds and support to Fatah's emergency government in the West Bank and hardening its no-contact policy toward Hamas-controlled Gaza, while Israel instituted a draconian closure of the Gaza Strip, dramatically decreasing the flow of goods into the territory and prohibiting exports of any kind. This was accompanied by increasing rocket and mortar attacks from Gaza, which targeted Israeli communities near the border. While intended as means to bolster the more politically moderate Fatah, this approach only undermined the prospects for reaching a two-state solution and for strengthening democracy in Palestine. Because Hamas enjoys broad popular support among many Palestinians, any efforts to promote peace and democratic institutions will only be sustainable if Hamas is included. Read full text >

Hamas
During an April 2008 trip to the region, President Carter and his group toured Sderot, a town of about 20,000 people that suffered almost daily attacks by Qassam rockets launched from Gaza. The group also visited the hospital in Ashkelon, another town under fire from rocket attacks from Gaza, and toured the Berzilai hospital where trauma victims of the rocket attacks receive medical care.

Hamas and other organizations are responsible for numerous attacks in the region against civilian as well as military targets. During meetings with Hamas officials, President Carter has condemned any such attacks as acts of terrorism and pressed the Hamas leaders to agree to a cease-fire. Read full text >

Settlements
The Carter Center believes that a principal obstacle to a viable two-state solution is the continued presence and expansion of Israeli settlements and outposts in the West Bank. A seemingly permanent infrastructure is emerging in the West Bank, characterized by a grid of settler-only roads, roadblocks, checkpoints, and the giant separation wall. Almost 40 percent of the West Bank now has been absorbed by Israeli settlements and related infrastructure while other areas are closed to Palestinians. The West Bank is home to over half a million Israeli settlers living among 2.5 million Palestinians. The settlement grid cuts off Palestinian communities from each other and has had a devastating impact on the social and economic life of Palestinians in the West Bank and on the Palestinian economy.

For more information on settlement construction, please visit Peace Now's, an Israeli organization,  "Settlements in Focus" publications.

For more information about the impact of these settlements, see the U.N.'s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) report.

Peace Now, an Israeli organization, recently revealed that Israel has plans to construct 73,000 new housing units in the occupied West Bank.

Read Carter Center Calls for End to Home Demolitions and Settlement Construction in the West Bank March 16, 2009.