Post date: Oct 22, 2012 6:40:3 PM
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter says the Middle East peace process has reached a crisis stage.
RAMALLAH, WEST BANK (OCTOBER 22, 2012) (REUTERS) - Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter on Monday (October 22) said the Israeli-Palestinian peace process had reached a crisis point and that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government was not pursuing a two-state solution.
"That policy of promoting a two-state solution seems to be abandoned now and we are deeply concerned about this move towards this catastrophic so-called one-state choice. It is not a solution it is a choice or an option and this is a major concern," Carter told a news conference.Carter helped forge Israel's peace deal with Egypt in 1979, the first between the Jewish state and an Arab country but has been a strong critic of Israeli settlement policy in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.
"I think for the first time in my memory of the Mideast peace process, we have reached a crisis stage, because all the previous prime ministers of Israel have been detectably and provenly committed to a two-state solution," Carter added.
He spoke during a visit along with other members of "The Elders", a group of former world leaders, to Israel, the occupied West Bank and Egypt.
The Elders met Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Monday (October 22). On Sunday (October 21) they met Israeli President Shimon Peres.
"I would say that every (Israeli) prime minister that I have known has been a pursuer of the two-state solution and I don't know that the President (U.S President Barack) Obama has found that Prime Minister Netanyahu has been willing to go that route," Carter said.
Israeli-Palestinian peace talks collapsed in 2010 over settlement building in the West Bank, territory Israel captured in a 1967 Middle East war that Palestinians seek, with theGaza Strip, for a future state, with East Jerusalem as its capital.
Netanyahu has voiced support for a two-state solution, but has said a future Palestinian country must be demilitarised and accept an Israeli military presence along the Jordan River, its likely eastern frontier.
He has said Israel was willing to make "painful compromises" for peace that require giving up "parts of the ancestral Jewish homeland" but has balked at returning to lines that existed before the 1967 conflict.
Israel cites historical and Biblical links to the West Bank, which it calls Judea and Samaria.