Should Jimmy Carter Meet With Hamas?

Jimmy Carter, the only American president ever to successfully negotiate a peace treaty between Israel and an Arab neighbor, announced last week that he intends to meet Khaled Mashaal, leader of Hamas. Now they're lining up to condemn him.

Ganging Up on Carter

"The President believes that if President Carter wants to go," White House flack Dana Perino said today, "that he is doing so in his own private capacity as a private citizen. He is not representing the United States in those meetings, and the President is not a supporter of having conversations with Hamas. And we have made that known." A reporter asked: "Does the President see this in any way undermining his own efforts to isolate Hamas?" Perino's answer: "I think Hamas has done a good enough job of isolating itself. We don't think that it's helpful, no."

A McCain flack said McCain "believes it is a serious and dangerous mistake for Americans of any stature to meet with an organization like Hamas that is committed to the destruction of Israel and regularly conducts terrorist attacks against innocent Israelis." Hillary Clinton's and Barack Obama's campaigns issued statements disagreeing with Carter's planned trip to Damascus, where Mashaal has been hauled up in secret locations, later this week (Israel assassinated Mashaal's two predecessor and tried to assassinate him at least once when Mashaal lived in Jordan. He is still in Israel's scopes.)

Money Speaks Louder than Party Solidarity

Even the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Howard Berman, the California Democrat, said Carter holds "warped" views on the Middle East (although Berman's political contributions are themselves somewhat "warped," to use his words, by pro-Israel donors, an odd bias for a congressional district stretching from Los Angeles to the San Fernando Valley: The top industries supporting Berman since he's been in Congress are, in that order, the entertainment industry--no surprise--, lawyers--no surprise--, real estate, and, in fourth place, pro-Israeli donors, who've contributed $231,000 so far). That's ahead of teachers, builders, the elderly, health care, human rights concerns, the insurance industry and many others. It also explains why Berman, barely a month into his tenure as chairman of the foreign affairs committee, is wasting no time rewarding his top donors' dues.)

Hamas, the Islamist-Palestinian resistance movement, is considered a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union and Israel. It's also the duly elected representative of a majority of Palestinians, if the 2006 elections (the freest in Palestinian history) are to be believed. No one doubted them then, not even the Bush administration. Hamas has a reprehensible platform. But it'll also be as impossible to reach any sort of truce, let alone a peace agreement, between Palestinians and Israelis without reckoning with Hamas. Besides, it's not as if, boxed-in though it is by its own violent, often juvenile rhetoric (and not so rhetorical suicide bombings), Hamas isn't willing to explore at least some possibilities of ending violence.

Shutting Out Enemies Doesn't Work

Let official Washington stay on the sidelines. It's not always necessary or constructive for the White House to be involved in Arab-Israeli affairs, least of all when the sitting administration is so disdainful of getting involved (cosmetic photo-ops like the recent Annapolis summit notwithstanding). In fact, American mediation hasn't produced any progress of note between Arabs and Israelis since Carter's Camp David accord in 1978. Israel negotiated the fateful 1993 Oslo accords secretly with Palestinians, under the aegis of Norway. Israel also negotiated its 1994 peace treaty with Jordan in secret, allowing Bill Clinton to ride the treaty's coattails on the White House lawn, for diplomacy's sake.

But that's not to say that skilled negotiators, Carter chief among them, cannot play a key role in mediation, especially when it involves as belligerent and intractable, but also as unavoidable a group, as Hamas. Why? Richard Armitage, formerly the deputy secretary of state during George W. Bush's first term (under Colin Powell), said it best: "Lazy diplomacy," as he called it, doesn't work. "We don't like Chavez, so we're just not going to speak to him. We don't like North Korea, we don't speak to them. We don't like Iran, we don't speak to them. Pretty soon we won't speak to Peru... Guess what? Pretty soon you're not speaking to more people than you're speaking to."

As I see it, Carter is doing quite a few people a very big face-saving favor, the deaf-mute Bush administration most of all.

Here's a new profile of Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal.