Mr Carr’s views on the Jewish-Arab conflict are the product of his distorted thinking on many issues including:

1. He relies on the Meron 1967 opinion but fails to mention that Judge Meron changed his view in 1968 as I pointed out in my earlier post.

2. Carr claims all settlements in the West Bank are illegal.
Wrong – all those settlements are legal under article 6 of the Mandate for Palestine and article 80 of the United Nations Charter – territory-specific legislation that dates back to 1922 and is still valid today.

3. Carr claims that Israel has been spreading settlements as fast as possible to render it impossible to achieve a two-state solution.
Wrong – the settlements cover only 5% of the West Bank territory. Israel made offers to cede its claims to 90% of the West Bank in 2000/1 and 95% in 2008.
There has been no settlement because the Arabs want 100%.

4. Carr claims Israeli Governments have gifted settlers the best land.
Wrong – the land given to settlers has been land that has mainly remained unsettled and undeveloped for the last 3000 years. It comprises State lands and waste lands not required for public purposes as prescribed under Article 6 of the Mandate for Palestine.

5. Carr claims that if the Palestinian Arabs throw up a granny flat without approval in Area C it is promptly demolished by army bulldozers.
Wrong – the granny flats are being thrown up by the European Union without approval to create facts on the ground. Yes – they are being demolished as happens to any illegal structures built in Australia.
The European Union has no right to charge in without authorisation.

6. Carr has asked – If Israel is really open to giving the land back in a peace deal why allow settlements in the first place?

Because the Arabs refused to negotiate with Israel between 1967 and 1993 and Israel was legally entitled to do so. Had the Arabs come to the party sooner the situation would have been different today.

Israel did the same in Gaza and unilaterally disengaged from every square inch of land there as well as a part of the West Bank in 2005 to advance the two-state solution.

7. Carr relies on Obama’s envoy and former Ambassador Martin Indyk to confirm settlements destroyed the deal.

Yet between 1948 and 1967 there were no settlements after all the Jews living in the West Bank had been driven out by the invading Transjordanian army. The Arabs could have had their state at any time during those 20 years in precisely the area they now claim for themselves with the stroke of an Arab League pen.

They could have had an even greater area had they not rejected the 1947 UN Partition Plan.

8. Carr finally twigs when he states that historically the aged and corrupt Palestinian leadership has to bear some responsibility and that they’ve let their people down.

Too many offers have gone begging and will not return again given the horrendous events being played out in the Middle East right now.

8. Carr claims the 83% Arab population of the West Bank is being ruled by a racial and religious minority of 17%.

Wrong – 95% of the Arab population live in Areas A and B and their daily lives are completely ruled by the PLO. Only 5% of the Arabs live in Area C under Israeli rule.

NSW Labor Party members need to carefully evaluate Mr Carr’s stated position before plunging headlong into adopting his proposal to recognise a Palestinian State if returned to Government.

Mr Carr might have been a former Premier and Foreign Minister but that alone does not guarantee that his opinions and views are always correct and should be unquestionably followed and supported.

“Dear Judge Meron

Did you change your well-known 1967 opinion on the applicability of the Geneva Convention – when in 1968 you co-signed with Michael Comay the following advice to Israel’s then Ambassador to the United States – Yitzchak Rabin:
“to tell the Americans that there are unique aspects to the status of the territories and to our status in the territories. Before the Six-Day War, the Gaza Strip wasn’t Egyptian territory, and the West Bank, too, was territory that had been occupied and annexed by Jordan without international recognition. Given this ambiguous, indeterminate territorial situation, the question of the convention’s applicability is complex and unclear prior to a peace agreement that includes setting secure and recognized borders.”