MTP Transcript for Dec. 3

MR. RUSSERT: Senator Warner, Mr. Gates was given a questionnaire by your committee. He says that things probably should’ve been differently done in Iraq. Donald Rumsfeld, the day before the election, wrote a memo saying “We need major adjustments.” Why didn’t the president say to the country before the election “We need major adjustments in our Iraq policy, mistakes have been made,” as opposed to “We’re going to stay the course. I’m not happy, but full speed ahead”?

SEN. WARNER: Well, I certainly regret some of those statements that were made at that time, but in, in fairness to the president, the nation was in the middle of an election period, and he had to exercise great care, such as his role as commander in chief, and what he was going to do now and in the future with the troops didn’t appear to be a political, a political reason to influence those elections. It was a tough call on his part. I wish they’d dropped some of the rhetoric. You’ll have to ask someone that lost the election how serious...(unintelligible)...turn one way or another. But...

MR. RUSSERT: Before we go, quickly, will Mr. Gates be confirmed?

SEN. WARNER: I think—I say with a great deal of confidence that our committee will do a very thorough job on Tuesday. I hope we can vote the nomination out at the conclusion of a long, open session to be followed by a closed session, and that on Wednesday, there’ll be, at the direction of our leadership, a floor debate and a vote. I think it shows that the Congress can swing into action and do our advise-and-consent role in a time of urgency like this, and do it correctly under the Constitution.

MR. RUSSERT: Republican John Warner, Democrat Carl Levin, thank you for your views.

SEN. LEVIN: Sure.

MR. RUSSERT: We’ll be right back with Jimmy Carter, the former president of the United States. A very provocative book about the Middle East.

(Announcements)

MR. RUSSERT: And we’re back, joined by the 39^th president of the United States, Jimmy Carter.

Welcome back.

FMR. PRES. JIMMY CARTER: Good to be back with you. Thank you.

MR. RUSSERT: Your 21^st book. “Palestine Peace Not Apartheid.” Mr.

President, that title alone is going to create some controversy.

FMR. PRES. CARTER: Well, well, maybe it’s provocative. That’s—I prefer that. I don’t look on provocative as a negative word. If it, if it provokes debate and assessment and disputes and arguments and maybe some action in the Middle East to get the peace process—which is now completely absent or dormant—rejuvenated, then—and brings peace, ultimately to Israel, that’s what I want.

MR. RUSSERT: Let me read from page 215 of your book. “A system of apartheid, with two peoples occupying the same land but completely separated from each other, with Israelis totally dominant and suppressing violence by depriving Palestinians of their basic human rights. This is the policy now being followed.” And last Sunday you told Louisville Courier-Journal, “I would say that in many ways the treatment of the Palestinians by the Israeli occupying forces is as onerous—and in some cases more onerous—as the treatment of black people in South Africa by the apartheid government.” Those are very strong words.

FMR. PRES. CARTER: They are exactly accurate. And I think I should point out quickly that the book refers to Palestine and not to Israel. And I also make clear in the book that the apartheid that is perpetrated now on the Palestinians in the occupied territories is not based on racism. It’s based on a desire by a minority of Israelis for Palestinian land. And in the acquisition of that land, the occupation, the confiscation, and then the colonization of that land, they are perpetuating an absolute and total division between Israelis living on Palestinian territory and the right of Palestinians to interrelate with any Israelis who are occupying their own land. So, that word is, is accurate for what the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians on Palestinian territory.

MR. RUSSERT: Michael Jacobs, who’s a managing editor of the Atlanta Jewish Times, wrote this in the Journal Constitution. “The use of ‘apartheid’ in the title [of President Carter’s book] is bizarre. Unlike blacks in pre-1990 South Africa, Israeli Arabs are the legal equals of Jewish citizens. Carter applies the term only to Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank who don’t live in Israel, aren’t Israeli citizens and don’t recognize the existence of the nation that supposedly is oppressing them.”

FMR. PRES. CARTER: That’s exactly right and, and he’s saying—that’s one of the few things he said that agrees with what I believe. And that is I’m not referring to the treatment of Arabs who are living in Israel and who are citizens of Israel and have full citizenship rights to vote and so forth. But the, the Arabs that live in the occupied territories—which is not Israel’s territory, but their own—are horribly abused. And I don’t think anyone could go to the West Bank and Gaza or even to East Jerusalem and see what’s happening now to the Palestinians that would disagree with my use of the word apartheid.

MR. RUSSERT: Let me take you back to January of 1976. You were on MEET THE PRESS and asked about the Middle East and about a Palestinian state. And let’s listen to, carefully, to what you said then and see if you in your mind, 30 years later, you’re still in agreement. Let’s watch.

(Videotape, January 11, 1976)

GOV. JIMMY CARTER (D-GA): I think when we get down to the last stages of solving the Middle Eastern question, which I hope we can do in the future, the recognition of the Palestinians as an entity with the right to have their own nation, to choose their own government, to exist in a territory, possibly on the West Bank and maybe the East Bank of the Jordan, is an integral part of an ultimate solution.

I would not recognize the Palestinian Liberation Organization, the PLO, nor their leaders under any circumstances, diplomatically, until they recognize the right of Israel to exist in peace in their present location in the Far East—in the Middle East. I think that ultimately Israel might have to withdraw to—from some of the boundaries, toward their 1967 boundaries. There’s some that I would not cede if I were the premier of Israel. One would be control of the Syrians—by the Syrians of the Golan Heights and I would not relinquish control of the, of the Jewish and Christian worship places in Jerusalem, but I think the recognition of the Palestinians as an entity and as a nation will be an integral part of the future of Middle Eastern settlement.

(End videotape)

FMR. PRES. CARTER: I was pretty wise for a Georgia governor in those days.

MR. RUSSERT: But that still pretty much outlines your views.

FMR. PRES. CARTER: It does. It does. And, and there can be some modifications of the 1967 borders as negotiated between the Israelis and the Palestinians. And this has been done, as I point out in the book, in what’s known as the Geneva Accords. And we were involved a little bit in that. And that is that Israel would, would continue to occupy a portion of the West Bank, on which is now living about 50 percent of all the Israeli settlers, in exchange for which they would cede a little bit of land, an equal amount of land, to the Palestinians just west of the Gaza Strip and, to some degree, inside Israel.

So it’s all feasible. It’s all spelled out in this book, and it’s the only avenue, in my opinion, that will ever lead—and I say this with—very carefully—will ever lead to permanent peace for Israel accepted by the rest of the world as an entity there.

MR. RUSSERT: As I read your book, this struck me, particularly from someone in political life. You wrote the following: “There are constant and vehement political and media debates in Israel concerning its policies in the West Bank, but because of powerful political, economic, and religious forces in the United States, Israeli government decisions are rarely questioned or condemned, voices from Jerusalem dominate in our media, and most American citizens are unaware of circumstances in the occupied territories.”

And then you went on to say: “There’s no doubt there is a strong aversion to criticizing Israel in this country. I wouldn’t say it’s all because of intimidation, but that is one factor.”

FMR. PRES. CARTER: Yeah. Do you disagree with that? Well, I won’t ask you that. You’re the one asking questions. But I don’t think anyone could disagree with that. There is—there are very few, if any, voices in the political realm of Washington, or in the major news media, who would raise the kind of issues that are raised in this book.

MR. RUSSERT: Why?

FMR. PRES. CARTER: I have said in the book, I don’t know if it’s intimidation or just reticence. There are some factors that are involved even in the religious circles. But it’s completely—almost completely unacceptable in this country for any public official to criticize the policies of Israel, even if they are horribly abusive against the Palestinians and violate human rights.

MR. RUSSERT: This is, this is, in effect, taking on the “Israeli lobby” or the “Jewish lobby.”

FMR. PRES. CARTER: That’s part. The Jewish lobby may be part of it. I didn’t say that in the book, but I think that’s part of it. But even—you know, I don’t think that The Washington Post or The New York Times or NBC or others are intimidated by, by the Jewish lobby. But I think there’s a reticence, even in public fora, to describe both sides of the issues in the West Bank.

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