Carter: Take the Initiative

Jimmy Carter rightly remembers the Camp David accords as the crowning achievement of his presidency, and he would like to ensure that they do not come to naught. In his new book, The Blood of Abraham, to be published next week by Houghton Mifflin, Carter traces the history of Middle East conflicts from biblical times and implores the Reagan Administration to make a more strenuous effort to resolve them.

"Under Reagan, the peace process has come to a screeching halt," Carter declares, "and the debacle in Lebanon severely damaged or destroyed our influence in that area." Carter complains that instead of negotiation, Reagan "has tended to prefer the threat or use of American military force," a policy that has proved to be "particularly painful and embarrassing" in the Middle East. The former President agrees with Arab moderates like Jordan's King Hussein that for the U.S. to have focused so heavily on Lebanon was "wasteful and counterproductive." Carter's advice: "The initiative for peace talks must come from the U.S."

Not that he is optimistic. He concludes after a 1983 visit to the region that the Arab states are as unwilling as ever to "give clear and official recognition" to Israel's right to exist within secure borders, while the Israelis are just as reluctant to withdraw from the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip and grant self-determination to the Palestinians. He compares the relatively moderate views of many West Bank Palestinians with the overheated and unrealistic rhetoric of some Palestine Liberation Organization officials, who in conversation "rarely mentioned the plight of their brothers in the West Bank and Gaza." Adds Carter: "Their statements . . . made it clear why the Israelis consider them mortal enemies and why the differences between Israel and the P.L.O. spokesmen seem irreconcilable."

Although the former President praises many of the Middle East leaders he has known, it is obvious that his hero is the late Anwar Sadat, whose home village Carter visited in 1983, some 17 months after Sadat's death. In his lifetime Sadat was condemned by many fellow Arabs for making peace with Israel. In Carter's view Sadat remained true to his Arab heritage even as he moved "toward peace for his people and justice for the Palestinians by acknowledging the need for incremental progress through negotiation."