Former US President Jimmy Carter. Photo: Chester L. Roberts via Wikimedia Commons.

President Donald Trump should tune out ex-President Jimmy Carter when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, the head of a leading US-based Jewish human rights group said on Thursday.

Rabbi Marvin Hier — the founder and dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center — made the statement after the 92-year-old Carter, who helped broker the historic 1979 Israel-Egypt peace treaty, said in a CNN interview, “I hope that President Trump will make progress in the dispute between Israel and the Palestinians and that he will bring justice to the Palestinians and alleviation of their long-term — 50-years now — suffering as an occupied territory. Of course, the Palestinians also have to be willing to recognize Israel as a nation living side-by-side with them in peace.”

Hier took the former president to task, saying, “Unfortunately, Jimmy Carter is the wrong person giving President Trump advice on how to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. President Carter refuses to recognize that this is not a conflict between the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli government and this has no relationship to his negotiations between Israel and Egypt.”

“Rather,” Hier — who gave a benediction at Trump’s inauguration in January — continued, “the current conflict is between Israel and two separate Palestinian entities, one of them controlled by Hamas, a terrorist organization committed to the destruction of Israel. No Israeli prime minister is going to make peace with two separate Palestine states.”

“The only solution is the removal of Hamas from power in Gaza,” Hier concluded.

In an interview with The Algemeiner earlier this week, Hier expressed confidence Trump would recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital during his visit to the Jewish state next week.