by Jimmy Carter,
The Washington Post
I know from personal involvement that the devastating invasion of Gaza by Israel could easily have been avoided.
After visiting Sderot last April and seeing the serious psychological damage caused by the rockets that had fallen in
that area, my wife, Rosalynn, and I declared their launching from Gaza to be inexcusable and an act of terrorism.
Although casualties were rare (three deaths in seven years), the town was traumatized by the unpredictable explosions.
About 3,000 residents had moved to other communities, and the streets, playgrounds and shopping centers were almost
empty. Mayor Eli Moyal assembled a group of citizens in his office to meet us and complained that the government of
Israel was not stopping the rockets, either through diplomacy or military action.
Knowing that we would soon be seeing Hamas leaders from Gaza and also in Damascus, we promised to assess prospects for
a cease-fire. From Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman, who was negotiating between the Israelis and Hamas, we
learned that there was a fundamental difference between the two sides. Hamas wanted a comprehensive cease-fire in both
the West Bank and Gaza, and the Israelis refused to discuss anything other than Gaza.
We knew that the 1.5 million inhabitants of Gaza were being starved, as the U.N. special rapporteur on the right to
food had found that acute malnutrition in Gaza was on the same scale as in the poorest nations in the southern Sahara,
with more than half of all Palestinian families eating only one meal a day.
…snip…
The URL of this article ishttp://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/07/AR2009010702645.html