My name is Ezra Nawi. I am a Jewish citizen of Israel.

Of course the policemen who accused me of assaulting them are lying. Indeed, lying has become common within the Israeli police force, military and among the Jewish settlers.

After close to 140,000 letters were sent to Israeli officials in support of my activities in the occupied West Bank, the Ministry of Justice responded that I "provoke local residents."

This response reflects the culture of deceit that has taken over all official discourse relating to the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

After all, was I the one who poisoned and destroyed Palestinian water wells?

Was I the one who beat young Palestinian children?

Did I hit the elderly?

Did I poison the Palestinian residents' sheep?

Did I demolish homes and destroy tractors?

Did I block roads and restrict movement?

Was I the one who prevented people from connecting their homes to running water and electricity?

Did I forbid Palestinians from building homes?

Over the past eight years, I have seen with my own two eyes hundreds of abuses such as these and exposed them to the public--therefore I am considered a provocateur. I can only say that I am proud to be a provoker.

Israel is now at a fateful crossroads, no less than Iran. An opportunity
lies before it that will not be seen again, one that affects the future
of all its people no less than the election results in Iran affect the
Iranians' fate. Missing the opportunity here will be just as decisive as
four more years of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in power. But look what is
happening in totalitarian Iran and what is happening here [in Israel], the sole
democracy in the Middle East, blah, blah, blah.

Jimmy Carter to meet Hamas leaders after criticising Israeli PM

• Former US president to travel to Gaza
• Netanyahu raised new obstacles to peace, Carter says

The former US president Jimmy Carter will visit Gaza for a rare meeting with senior Hamas officials following his criticism of a key speech by Israel's prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, on Sunday night.

Carter, who has been in Israel and the occupied West Bank over the past week, will be one of the most senior western figures to meet the Hamas leadership in Gaza in recent years. He is expected to meet, among other Hamas officials, Ismail Haniyeh, the former Palestinian prime minister.

Last month in Damascus he met Khaled Meshal, the head of the Hamas political bureau and the group's effective leader. Carter has been meeting Israeli officials and travelled to a Jewish settlement on the West Bank at the weekend as part of his private diplomatic efforts. His visits are not always welcomed by the Israeli government, which has been angered by his meetings in recent years with Hamas.

On Sunday Carter criticised a policy speech given by Netanyahu, in which the Israeli prime minister, responding to weeks of pressure from ­Washington, gave carefully worded approval for a future Palestinian state under strict ­conditions, but insisted "normal lives" should continue in Jewish settlements in east Jerusalem and the West Bank.

"My opinion is he raised many new obstacles to peace that had not existed under previous prime ministers," Carter said during a visit to the Knesset in ­Jerusalem.

"He still apparently insists on expansion of existing settlements, he demands that the Palestinians and the Arabs recognise Israel as a Jewish state, although 20% of its citizens here are not Jews. This is a new demand."

But Carter said he had encountered even greater differences with the former Israeli prime minister, Menachem Begin, and had still managed to broker a peace deal between Israel and Egypt.