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Gaza situation intolerable 8 months after war: Carter

Sunday, 03 May 2015 2:25 AM [ Last Update: Sunday, 03 May 2015 2:35 AM ]

Former US President Jimmy Carter: “The situation in Gaza is intolerable."

Former US President Jimmy Carter says the situation in the Gaza Strip remains intolerable eight months after Israel’s war on the besieged territory.

Carter is on a three-day visit to al-Quds (Jerusalem) and other occupied Palestinian territories.

“The situation in Gaza is intolerable. Eight months after a devastating war, not one destroyed house has been rebuilt and people cannot live with the respect and dignity they deserve,” Carter said on Saturday.

Israel started its war on the Gaza Strip in early July last year. The offensive ended on August 26, 2014 with a truce that took effect after indirect negotiations in the Egyptian capital, Cairo.

A Palestinian girl stands on the edge of a destroyed house where her family returned to live in the Shejaiya neighborhood of Gaza City, March 30, 2015. (AP photo)

Nearly 2,200 Palestinians, including 577 children, were killed in Israel’s 50-day onslaught. Over 11,100 others - including 3,374 children, 2,088 women and 410 elderly people - were also injured.

Carter also blasted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, saying, “as long as he is in charge, there will be no two-state solution and therefore no Palestinian state.”

In addition, Carter said Israel “does not now and has never sincerely believed in a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine.”

A Palestinian family lives in what is left of their war-damaged house in the Shejaiya neighborhood of Gaza City, January 6, 2015. (AP photo)

In fact, Carter and his traveling companion, former Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland, didn’t even ask for a meeting with Netanyahu or anyone else from the Israeli regime because “it would be a waste of time,” according to the former US president.

He and Brundtland are part of a group known as The Elders, which includes other prominent world figures that describe themselves as "independent global leaders working together for peace and human rights."

Carter is a major critic of Israel’s policies against the Palestinian people.

In his book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid published in November 2006, Carter compared Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories with the apartheid system of South Africa while it was under white minority rule -- from 1948 to 1994.