Having decided to make a habit of authoring books with misleading titles, the peripatetic former President Carter now offers readers his latest thin work, "We Can Have Peace in the Holy Land." I say misleading not because of any specifics of former President Carter's plan - he like anybody else is entitled to his opinion - but because he does not begin to offer it until page 159, which given that the work comes in at a slender 182 pages of original text, might make the discerning reader wonder what he or she is getting in the initial 87% of the work. Perhaps you expect this to be a background to the conflict? That too would be mistaken. 
 Having reached the first days of his presidency around page 15, Carter spends more than 140 pages reviewing not so much the region in general, but rather his self imagined centrality to it and its narrative. In its way, this is an impressive trick, since other than his four year term, he has spent the next almost three decades as what could at best be charitably be described as a bit player. Undeterred by this reality, Carter does an extraordinary job of asserting himself in Zelig-like fashion into near every significant event in the Middle East that followed his1980 defeat. 
 One might, perhaps, therefore dispense with these first 159 pages and consider "his" plan, were it not for the disturbing picture painted by this self promoting narrative. In a curious turn, the former President seems to imagine history as a sort of Passion Play, casting himself as the man carrying the cross. Even the most charitable of readings leaves one scratching his head at the enormous chip Carter carries on his shoulder, and his tendency to twist to demonstrate his status as a blameless victim. 
 Thus, in his only consideration of his defeat by Reagan, Carter offers his shrunken share of the Jewish vote in 1980 as "...disturbing indications of significant opposition to the Camp David Accords and Israeli-Egyptian Peace Agreement..." Putting aside this statements implicit claim that Carter's defeat resulted from the votes of perfidious, parochial, peace-hating American Jews, any quick examination of the 1980 election results reveals his analysis to be dangerously misguided. Carter's 44-state landslide loss -- indeed, even his failure to win the Jewish vote - almost certainly had nothing to do with Arab-Israeli diplomacy. Did Texas flip from Carter's win column in '76 to Reagan's because of the Jews? Did Kentucky? 
 Suffering punishing inflation at home and humiliation abroad, Carter lost every reliable white democratic demographic, including union members and Catholics, often by significantly higher percentages than he did Jews. There is no reason to believe that Jews were different from any of these other demographics in making a choice based on his ineffectual leadership. Yet clearly such obvious realities go beyond the former President's limited capacity for self analysis. 
 A second disturbing defect of character can be found in former President Carter's seemingly limitless appetite to embrace dictators, even as he expresses an almost seething contempt for the democratically elected leader's of the Jewish state. Anwar Sadat, Egypt's assassinated authoritarian President is raised by Carter to the level of sacred martyr. President Hosni Mubarak ("old friend" as Carter notes) likewise comes in for heaping praise, this despite his authoritarian leadership of a regime as infamous for torture as it is for corruption. That Mubarak, who is approaching the end of his third decade in leadership, and by most accounts currently engaged in a Pharanoic effort to install his son as his replacement, receives such admiration should lead one to seriously question Carter's judgment. 
 Nor does the former President's general analysis do a better job building confidence in his assessments. Time and again he reads less like a thoughtful diplomat and more like a Public Relations man defending a client. His acts of omission and commission prove nothing short of shocking. Thus on page 7, Carter dispenses with any mention of the murderous Arab revolt of the 1930's with its accompanying massacres of the ancient Jewish Communities of the West Bank, simply saying that the British acceded to Arab "demands" on limiting "...[the:] Zionist movement and land purchases." Adding insult to injury, he follows this in the very next sentence with "violence erupted from Jewish militants," as if the gun totting Jews were crashing a collegial tea party. 
 Perhaps even more disturbing, Carter extends particular efforts to whitewash Hamas and there terrorist actions. Carter spares no praise for his own success in getting Hamas to pledge "not to interfere with [Palestinian:] governing authority." Then, without even breaking for a paragraph, he goes on to write that "Almost immediately Israeli voters returned Likud to power... which spelled the end of the Oslo process." In his effort to moderate Hamas Carter chooses to leave unmentioned the spate of bus and mall bombings they orchestrated which gave Likud the victory. It would seem in Carter's mind it was Israeli voters, not Arab terrorists, who murdered the Oslo process. 
 Similarly, on the Hamas Charter, he claims that its contents are similar to the founding documents of the secular PLO, ignoring its explicit and seething anti-Semitism, and claims that the world's evils can be blamed on a shadowy conspiracy of international Jews. 
 Having eschewed footnotes or even a bibliography, one is often left wondering where Carter might source many of his claims. For example he claims that the "Saudi Peace Plan" allows for negotiations on its details, but never mentions that several Israeli Prime Ministers have offered to meet with the Arab League to discuss the proposal, only to have these overtures rejected. While Carter claims otherwise, the Arab League has always been quite clear that theirs is a take it or leave it proposal, despite its insistence that Israel commit national suicide, by forcing a "two-state solution" both of which would be majority Arab. 
 As for Carter's peace plan there is likewise here nothing new or novel. Indeed, having been accused of plagiarism for his last work, one might imagine Carter would at least show the sense and good manners to credit the many others who have made similar proposals, crediting only the "Saudi Plan." "His" plan? The creation of a demilitarized Palestinian state in Gaza, the West Bank, and Jerusalem, with a Palestinian right of return to this new state. Unfortunately, in the fewer thirty pages he offers to describe the plan, Carter offers at best thin proof that this proposal would be acceptable to the Palestinians. One gets the feeling that the "plan" was besides the point of this book, merely a hook so that he might pull readers into his self-aggrandizing narrative. 
 The whole of the Oslo process was characterized by the world's failure to listen to the Palestinians as Israel, Europe, and America all agreed on what a "just" solution would look like and simply assuming that this would likewise be acceptable to the Palestinians. Save for Carter, most of the other participants have learned from this mistake. By contrast, the former President continues to pretend that the Palestinian statements don't really matter. 
 To date no Palestinian in a position of leadership has shown any appetite to compromise on the imagined "right of return," and limit it to a new Palestinian state. Likewise, I would have welcomed a footnote pointing to the Palestinian leader who was willing to embrace a state that was "demilitarized." Hamas continue to claim loudly and proudly their goal to destroy the Jewish state and murder Jews world wide, as often as not they claim this as a religious obligation. Perhaps the former President should show them enough respect to take them at their word. 
 The most interesting and illuminating thing to be found in the whole of "We Can Have Peace in the Holy Land" comes on page 2 and 3. There Carter offers a map of the path of Israel's much decried - and highly successful in terrorist prevention - security barrier along with a chart of the territory it encompasses. While following his habit, the former President offers no source for these documents, let us take him at his word that they are accurate. By his own admission, the barrier leaves a staggering 88% of the West Bank to its east, a large contiguous territory which might be the basis of a new 23-Arab state. One wonders why Carter doesn't even consider urging the Palestinians to accept this and Gaza as the basis of the new state. Yet it is quite clear that such compromise would not serve Carter's ends. 
 Having cast himself as a victim, one should find nothing surprising that former President Carter embraces the Palestinians, a people who have made the role of hapless, helpless, blameless victim the core of their national identity. This identification can only be furthered by the fact that both Carter and the Palestinians seem to have selected the Jews to fill the role of their victimizer in their respective self-beatifying narratives. Such an identity does nothing to further the cause of peace, as an individual or group denuded of blame for the results of their actions is likewise absolved of the responsibility necessary to see that they hold to the terms of any agreement. No doubt this helps Carter and the Palestinians feel better at themselves, and that may be worth something, though likely not much.