Former US President Jimmy Carter told al-Jazeera television he "was not equating Palestinian missiles with terrorism," during an appearance on the Arab satellite station on Sunday.
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The broadcast has been translated and made available by MEMRI,
the Middle East translation service.
"I don't consider... I wasn't equating the Palestinian missiles with terrorism," said Carter, adding: "But when the Palestinians commit terrorist acts, and I mean when a person blows himself up within a bus full of civilians, or when the target of the operation is women and children – such acts create a rejection of the Palestinians among those who care about them."
Carter discussed his recent book, 'Peace Not Apartheid,' slammed by many critics as being highly biased against Israel.
"In my book, I talk about violence from both sides, and I describe very carefully and accurately the number of casualties among Palestinians and Israelis, including children. The number of Palestinian children who died because of the violence is five times greater than the number of Israeli children, and I condemn this kind of violence on both sides," he said.
Responding to criticisms of his book, Carter added: "Most of the condemnations of my book came from Jewish American organizations, which think that I believe there is racial segregation inside Israel. I don't base it on that."
"My whole book is written about Palestine and its lands, and about what is going on against the Palestinian people, which is, in my view, very similar, and in some cases even worse, than what happened to the blacks in South Africa," Carter said.
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