AFP quotes him as saying, "We will continue to work on a peaceful solution where the Israelis will withdraw from east Jerusalem and let this be the capital of a Palestinian state."
Since 1948, the entire world has demanded that Israel not establish its capital in even the western part of Jerusalem. Israelis have been told that the eternal Jewish capital and the center of Jewish hopes and dreams for some 3000 years cannot be the capital of the Jewish state, rather it must be in the new city of Tel Aviv. The Green Line, which everyone now remembers as an "internationally recognized border," was not considered a legal boundary by anyone, and as a result Israel's declaring Jerusalem as its capital was considered somehow illegitimate.
Even today, practically no country recognizes even the western part of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Instead, the world is demanding that Jerusalem become the capital of a Palestinian Arab state.
Arab interest in Jerusalem was practically nil before the anti-semitic Mufti in the 1920s started politicizing the issue, and then it faded from Muslim and Arab consciousness for the 19 years of Jordanian rule when the Palestinian Arab national cause was all but mute.
Arab interest in Jerusalem is directly proportional to Jewish political rule over the city. It is not inherent; it is derivative. It was never set up as a positive goal but rather a negative one - they didn't want to establish Jerusalem as an Arab capital, but to deprive Jews of establishing it as theirs.
Nowhere was this clearer than in 1949, when almost the entire Arab world appealed to the UN to make Jerusalem an international city - and expel all Jews who moved there since 1947:
Is this how a nation acts towards their capital?
Fast forward back to today. Idiots like Carter insist that a Palestinian Arab state cannot possibly exist without Jerusalem as their capital.
The simple question is - why?
If Tel Aviv must be Israel's capital according to the entire world, why can Ramallah not be the Palestinian Arab capital?
The fact is that the only reason that people say that Jerusalem must be the Palestinian Arab capital is because the Palestinian Arabs insist upon it, despite the absence of any historical ties to the city as a political or cultural center for the Arab world. Their insistence - wholly predicated on taking away Jewish sovereignty - is regarded as somehow more valuable and authentic than the rich Jewish historical, religious and cultural ties to the city.
The question of Jerusalem exposes the hypocrisy of the world.