With Jimmy Carter speaking recently about recognizing Hamas' legitimacy and his stance against Israel's military policy in Gaza - what was his official policy during his presidency? Was there any situations that called for decisions on his part? Based purely on his actions during his presidency would one consider him for or against Israel at that time?
Carter is often reviled as one of the most anti-Israel presidents of the United States in history, by Jewish groups. To understand why is difficult, because Carter did many things. But his official policies on Israel were such that:
Carter was unusually public in sharing his ideas: the Israelis would eventually have to come to terms with the Palestinians and PLO (he used them interchangeably, notable is that the PLO had not yet renounced terrorism or recognized Israel), and he had no sympathy for Arab countries refusing to come to an agreement with Israel.
He rankled many traditional diplomats because he didn't believe in the secrecy that Kissinger had employed in making diplomatic overtures, and was quite vocal on strong positions from the get-go.
Carter laid out three basic principles for peace: arrangements that took into account security along the 1967 lines, normalizations of relations (ie. exchanging diplomats etc.), and a solution to the Palestinian problem.
Carter would go on to do many things that shifted him further from the traditional US line on Israel (at least, traditional over the post-1967 presidencies). He called for a Palestinian homeland, something that stunned the Israelis and contributed to a growing feeling of a crisis in Israeli-American relations after (just a few days before) Israeli Prime Minister Rabin had mischaracterized some of what Carter had told him and the White House issued a clarification.
Carter's relations with Israel got off to a rocky start, and it only got rockier from there. Yitzhak Rabin was removed from power not long after, and replaced by Israel's first-ever right-wing government, led by Menachem Begin, in 1977. Yitzhak Rabin and Carter had not necessarily gotten along well, but Begin posed a bigger problem for Carter in general, because he was far more intransigent than Rabin had been.
Carter had two more basic assumptions: a peace settlement had to be comprehensive, and not deal with issues separately in multiple agreements, and Israel could get security with only minor adjustments to the 1967 lines. Israelis did not really think so: the memory of 1973 fresh on their minds, they didn't necessarily trust the Arab states to make peace without Israeli control of the land it had captured.
With Begin's election, Carter was completely blindsided. Very few had expected Begin to really win, and his policy was very hostile to Carter's ideas. Begin opposed territorial compromise, in terms of giving up land for peace, and he was in favor of creating more settlements. He outright refused any discussion of withdrawing from the West Bank most fervently, and called "Judea and Samaria" not occupied, but "liberated areas".
Nevertheless, talks were friendly. There was no real tension between the leaders, though no real friendliness either. But Begin and Carter saw the role of the United States as very different. Begin believed the US should do nothing more than bring the sides together, and Carter believed it should be an active facilitator and mediator, suggesting proposals and revisions of its own. This led to tension. Carter disagreed, of course, believing that the United States' draft proposals (which were pretty far along developed) should be considered. But because of the rough start Carter had gotten to with the Israeli government of Rabin, and the perception that Carter was more pro-Arab (thanks to his terminology), it was almost all downhill from there. Carter would continue to pressure the Israelis quite a bit, and many of his pressures went nowhere: Israel's peace deal concluded with Sadat was as much a product of Sadat wanting peace as it was Carter's, if not more because of how unexpectedly Sadat decided it was worthwhile to try. Carter did play an instrumental role in the negotiations of the Camp David Accords, but his foreign policy in general was not viewed favorably by Israel. Carter was more willing to work and coordinate with Arab states, particularly Egypt, and less willing to work with the Israeli leadership, than Nixon, Ford, or Johnson had been, and that rubbed many Israelis the wrong way.
The Camp David Accords were signed during Carter's presidency, and they represented a major boon for Israeli security. They established formal diplomatic relations between Israel and Egypt. Beyond that, Carter's policy was basically the same as any other American President since Johnson: 1) Support Israel's existence, 2) Condemn the building of settlements on land acquired during the Six Days War, 3) condemn Arab terrorism. That's pretty dyed in the wool.