CARTER:
Page 148: Maps on this page are labeled: “Palestinian Interpretation of Clinton’s Proposal 2000” and “Israeli Interpretation of Clinton’s Proposal 2000.”
FACT:
The maps are mislabeled. Dennis Ross, the U.S. peace negotiator who drew up the original version of Carter’s maps, explained:
The problem is that the ''Palestinian interpretation'' is actually taken from an Israeli map presented during the Camp David summit meeting in July 2000, while the ''Israeli interpretation'' is an approximation of what President Clinton subsequently proposed in December of that year. Without knowing this, the reader is left to conclude that the Clinton proposals must have been so ambiguous and unfair that Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, was justified in rejecting them. But that is simply untrue. (New York Times, Jan. 9, 2007)
Rick Richman gives further details about how the maps are mislabeled, and explains that “the point [Carter] was trying to make with the borrowed and altered maps is central to his entire book.”
[…]
CNN, The Situation Room, Nov. 28, 2006
You could check with all the records. Barak never did accept [the Clinton parameters].
FACT:
According to Clinton’s parameters, “a small Israeli presence” under the authority of an international force could remain in “fixed locations” in the Jordan Valley, but it would withdraw after a maximum of 36 months. Israel would withdraw from “between 94 and 96 percent of West Bank territory” and there would be a land swap of 1 to 3 percent. Barak’s response was clear—he accepted the parameters. (Dennis Ross, The Missing Peace)
[…]
CARTER:
Page 130: … when I visited Damascus in 1990, President Assad informed me that he was willing to negotiate with Israel on the status of the Golan Heights. His proposal was that both sides withdraw from the international border … [and] Syria might move its troops farther from the border because of the terrain.
FACT:
Former executive director of the Carter Center Kenneth Stein, who was at the meeting, explained that his own notes of the Damascus meeting show that Assad, in response to a question from Carter, replied that Syria could not accept a demilitarized Golan without “sacrificing our sovereignty.” Stein also disputed Carter’s statement in the book that Assad expressed willingness to move Syria’s troops farther from the border than Israel should be required to do. (Los Angeles Times, Jan. 17, 2006)
[…]
CARTER:
Page 121: Each Israeli settler uses five times as much water as a Palestinian neighbor, who must pay four times as much per gallon.
FACT:
According to Sharif Elmusa, who was a water negotiator for the Palestinian side in talks with Israel, Palestinians in the West Bank pay approximately $1 per CM for domestic water, “virtually identical with the price in Israel …” (Elmusa, Water Conflict, 144)
Similarly, with regard to agricultural water, Elmusa writes: " … in absolute terms, the price of irrigation water in Israel, the West Bank, and Jordan converged, and water prices could not have affected competitiveness in any significant way." (Elmusa, 173)
[…]
CARTER:
Page 197: Confessions extracted through torture are admissible in Israeli courts.
FACT:
Under Israeli criminal procedures when a person claims that his confession was extracted via torture, a “trial-within-a-trial” is immediately held (in Hebrew mishpat zuta) in which the prosecution must prove that torture or other illegitimate means were not used. If the prosecution is unable to disprove claims of torture the confession is thrown out. In addition, if it appears that other illegal means short of torture were used, the confession can be admitted, but only if the court finds that the interrogation did not prejudice the defendant’s free will. (See for example, The Right to a Fair Trial, D. Weissbrodt and R. Wolfrum, eds., Springer, 1997.)
[…]
CARTER:
NPR, Fresh Air, Nov. 26, 2006:
So far neither Olmert nor his predecessor Sharon has been willing to negotiate at all with the Palestinians even though their choice and the choice of the United States, that is Mahmoud Abbas, was the prime minister under of Arafat and later elected to be president. …
Even when he was ordained as the one to represent the Palestinians, still not a single day of negotiations has been committed by Israel or the United States.
FACT:
News reports prove Carter wrong. For example, the New York Times’ Steven Erlanger wrote on Feb. 9, 2005:
Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, and Ariel Sharon, prime minister of Israel, held summit talks at this Egyptian resort on Tuesday -- the highest-level meeting between the sides in four years -- and declared a truce in hostilities.