JERUSALEM—Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Reuven Rivlin have rejected invitations to meet with former U.S. President Jimmy Carter on his visit to the region in about 10 days.
A senior Israeli official said the reason was Carter's "anti-Israel" views, particularly views he expressed during last year's war in the Gaza Strip.
Carter was granted a visit to the Gaza Strip via an Israeli checkpoint. He is expected to meet with Palestinian leaders on the West Bank. It is not clear whether he will attempt to meet with other prominent Israelis, such as former President Shimon Peres.
The rejection of the invitations by Netanyahu and Rivlin came after consultation with the Foreign Ministry and the National Security Council, an Israeli official said.
Carter has been an increasingly outspoken critic of Israel in recent years. During Israel's war with Hamas last summer in which Israel shelled and bombed the Gaza Strip in retaliation for Hamas' rocketing of Israeli towns, the former president said, there was "no justification in the world for what Israel is doing."
He has also been a consistent critic of Israeli settlement in the West Bank, which he has termed illegal under international law. Although he rejected a full economic boycott to pressure Israel on the settlement issue, he did call on the European Union to have products originating in the settlements labeled as such.
In 1978, during his term as president, Carter invited then Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat to meet in Camp David for peace talks. During 12 days of arduous negotiations, with both sides packing their bags in anger, the president played a key stabilizing role.
When talks deadlocked, he met separately with the two leaders—without aides—as he explored ways to bridge the differences. The agreement he brokered led the following year to a peace treaty, the first between Israel and an Arab state.