Arab-Israel peace a 'dead issue' because of Netanyahu, says Carter

Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations are a "dead issue" because Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is unwilling to accept a Palestinian state, according to former US president Jimmy Carter.

Mr Carter, speaking on a visit to Jerusalem, also said US influence in the region was waning and that European countries needed to play a bigger role in addressing the conflict, including by recognising Palestine.

"I think the United States' influence now in Jerusalem and Ramallah is at a very low ebb," he said in an interview with the Financial Times and Germany's Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. "My belief and hope is that the European Union members would play a very strong and active role in promoting Palestinian rights and peace, and will take the leadership."

Several European parliaments have held symbolic votes calling for the recognition of Palestine in recent months, and France is leading efforts to draft a UN Security Council resolution that would set parameters for ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

When asked whether Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, which collapsed a year ago, might be revived, Mr Carter said: "It's a dead issue."

Mr Netanyahu, who won re-election in April after a controversial campaign, is set to announce this week a coalition of rightwing and religious parties expected to be one of the most hawkish in Israel's history.

In an attempt to rally rightwing voters the closing days of the campaign, the Israeli leader said he would not accept a Palestinian state, given current turmoil in the Middle East, although he later sought to qualify the comments.

"This is the end of it during the Netanyahu regime in my opinion," Mr Carter said about the prospect of relaunching peace talks.

The former US leader presided over the Camp David Accords in 1978, when Egypt and Israel concluded a peace treaty, the first between an Arab country and the Jewish state.

More recently Mr Carter angered many Israelis with sharp criticism of Israel, including in his 2006 book "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid". Last year, during Israel's military operation in the Gaza Strip when the militant group Hamas was firing rockets into Israel, Mr Carter said there was "no justification in the world for what Israel is doing".

Reuven Rivlin, Israel's president, declined a request for a meeting from Mr Carter.

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Mr Carter and Ms Brundtland said they were not able to visit Gaza because of security concerns. On Saturday they met Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah. The group are trying to break a political deadlock between Hamas and Mr Abbas's Fatah, whose feuding - despite a reconciliation agreement reached last year - is blocking efforts to rebuild Gaza after last summer's war.

The former leaders said they had secured an agreement from the 80-year-old Palestinian leader to convene the Interim Leadership Framework, which would include both the Palestine Liberation Organisation and representatives of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, Gaza's two main militant factions.

"That would be the key to co-operation in the broadest sense among all the major factions of the Palestinians," Mr Carter said.

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