In paying tribute to Jimmy Carter, who died at the age of 100 on Sunday, President Isaac Herzog lauded the 39th US president for being “a brave leader” responsible for the landmark 1979 peace treaty between Israel’s prime minister Menachem Begin and Egypt’s president Anwar Sadat.“In recent years, I had the pleasure of calling him and thanking him for his historic efforts to bring together two great leaders, Begin and Sadat, and forging a peace between Israel and Egypt that remains an anchor of stability throughout the Middle East and North Africa many decades later,” Herzog said. “His legacy will be defined by his deep commitment to forging peace between nations. On behalf of the Israeli people, I send my condolences to his family, his loved ones, and to the American people.”
Carter will indeed be remembered for negotiating the so-called Camp David Accords in 1978, and hosting the signing of the Egypt-Israel peace treaty at the White House on March 26, 1979, which helped earn him the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 “for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts.”
But his legacy regarding Israel and the Palestinians is a complex one. After he stepped down as president in 1981, he became one of Israel’s most outspoken critics and one of the Palestinians' most vocal supporters. When he published his book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid in 2006, suggesting that Israel was on the path to becoming an apartheid state, he was roundly condemned by American Jewish leaders, and 14 members of an advisory board to his foundation, the Atlanta-based Carter Center, resigned in protest. Abe Foxman, former director of the Anti-Defamation League, called him a “bigot,” while Deborah Lipstadt, now the Biden administration’s special envoy on antisemitism, accused him of having a “Jewish problem.”
Carter – a devout Evangelical Christian – strongly denied that he was antisemitic, saying criticism of his book had not weakened his commitment to a two-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “I have been called a liar. I have been called an antisemite, I have been called a bigot. I have been called a plagiarist. I have been called a coward,” Carter told a seminar at the University of Georgia.
“Those kinds of accusations – they concern me, but they don’t detract from the fact the book is accurate and is needed. Not one of the critics of my book has contradicted any of the basic premises... that is the horrible persecution and oppression of the Palestinian people – and secondly, that the formula for finding peace in the Middle East already exists.”
Dr. Kenneth Stein, a former Middle East Fellow of the Carter Center from 1982-2006 and Carter’s primary Middle East adviser until 1994, provided The Jerusalem Post with a unique perspective on his legacy. “Carter is widely remembered for several domestic and foreign policy accomplishments, but two benchmark changes in the Middle East mark his legacy,” Stein wrote. “He stewarded the completion of the 1979 Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty, fostering peace between the two enemies of 30 years,” he said.
“His administration also engaged with Iran as the Shah fell, which led to the rise of the Iranian Islamic Republic, which held 444 Americans hostage for the last two years of his presidency,” the president’s Middle East adviser said. “The impact of both events still reverberates through the Middle East.”
Prolonged involvement in Arab-Israeli negotiations
Noting that Carter’s prolonged involvement in Arab-Israeli negotiations had created an expectation that presidential engagement was absolutely essential for future agreements to be negotiated and reached between Arabs and Israelis, Stein summed up Carter’s legacy as follows: “For forty-plus years, he used the post-presidency as an extended second presidential term that he fervently believed he deserved but wrongfully lost [Ed: to Ronald Reagan]. Among former US presidents, Carter set a standard for public commentary and engagement in foreign affairs that likely will never be matched.”
In this spirit, we salute Jimmy Carter for the good things he did in the century he lived. As Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, “We will always remember president Carter’s crucial role in facilitating the first Arab-Israeli peace treaty, signed by prime minister Menachem Begin of Israel and president Anwar Sadat of Egypt. This treaty has lasted for nearly half a century, providing hope for future generations.”