Jimmy Carter Blames Paris Attacks on Middle East Conflict
Image by Getty Images
The Israel-Palestinian conflict is one of the factors that led to the deaths of 17 victims in three attacks in France, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter said.
Carter made the assertion Monday night during an appearance on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show.
“Well, one of the origins for it is the Palestinian problem. And this aggravates people who are affiliated in any way with the Arab people who live in the West Bank and Gaza, what they are doing now — what’s being done to them. So I think that’s part of it,” Carter told Jon Stewart.
He called the training in the Middle East of Muslim extremists with passports from countries such as France, Britain and the United States a “new evolutionary development in terrorism.”
“They stay there for a few months and learn how to be a terrorist and then they come back through Turkey and you know they have been there and you know who they are. And I think this event in Paris is going to waken up the people in charge of security to watch those people more closely than they have in the past – and not single out all of the Muslims in the country,” he said.
Carter, who wrote a book called “Palestine: Peace not Apartheid,” told Stewart that it is “disheartening” to think about how much time has elapsed since the Oslo Accords –signed in 1993 – without a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.
“I still have hope for peace in the Middle East, but a distant hope,” he said. He said the United States must be “in the forefront of demanding that the Palestinians and the Israelis come together and accept a reasonable solution to the problem.”
His formula, he told Stewart, is for Israel to give up the West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem and for the Palestinians to promise Israel security.
The Daily Show
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Indecision Political Humor,The Daily Show on Facebook
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
