Carter Says Hamas and Syria Are Open to Peace (with several grains of salt)

The claims in regard to Hamas are overstated by Carter, but it is an opening. RS




April 22, 2008
Carter Says Hamas and Syria Are Open to Peace
By ETHAN BRONNER

JERUSALEM — Jimmy Carter, the former American president, said on Monday that he had obtained a significant concession from the Palestinian group Hamas regarding Israeli-Palestinian peace and also found the Syrian leadership eager for a full peace treaty with Israel.

Mr. Carter, who spoke in Jerusalem after several days of talks in the Syrian capital, Damascus, said he had extracted from Hamas a promise to respect the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip if it were ratified by a referendum of the Palestinian people.

He said further that Syria believed “about 85 percent” of the issues between it and Israel had been resolved in prior negotiations and it wanted a peace deal “as soon as possible.”

Given the general pessimism surrounding Israeli-Arab peace, Mr. Carter’s upbeat assessment had a contrarian quality to it, as did his decision to meet in Damascus with President Bashar al-Assad of Syria and the Hamas leadership, all of whom are shunned by the Bush administration which asked him not to hold the meetings.

Mr. Carter called the agreement on a Palestinian state, obtained from Hamas in writing, important because it meant that Hamas, a radical group excluded from the Palestinian Authority yet currently ruling in the Gaza Strip, would not disrupt the negotiations or implementation of any accord if the Palestinian people supported it in a free vote.

“If the agreement calls for a two-state solution and the recognition of Israel and Palestine, Hamas will, in effect, recognize Israel, if the people agree on the plan,” Mr. Carter told the Israel Council on Foreign Relations in a speech here.

In a subsequent interview with The New York Times, Mr. Carter struck a more cautious note, saying, “I’m not claiming it’s a breakthrough.” He added, “I don’t have any control over whether or not Hamas does what they tell me. I just know what they tell me.”

Israeli officials opposed Mr. Carter’s meetings with Hamas leaders, saying doing so legitimizes a group they consider to be a terrorist organization. But Mr. Carter said on Monday, “The problem is not that I met with Hamas in Syria. The problem is that Israel and the United States refuse to meet these people.”

How a referendum would work is not clear. Mr. Carter said in the interview that he understood that only those Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip would participate and that the voting would be monitored by international observers, including observers from the Carter Center.

But Khaled Meshal, the Hamas leader in Damascus with whom Mr. Carter had spoken, gave a televised news conference late Monday and said that Hamas wants all Palestinians, including those living abroad, to vote. Palestinians in refugee camps in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan would likely insist on a right of return to their original homes in what is today Israel, something Israel has said it could never accept.

Mr. Meshal also focused on the return of Palestinians to Israel and Hamas’s refusal to accept Israel’s legitimacy when he said, "Hamas accepts the establishment of an independent Palestinian state on the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital and with full and real sovereignty and full application of the right of the Palestinian refugees to return but Hamas will not recognize the state of Israel."

In addition, Mr. Meshal emphasized something else — that no referendum could take place before Hamas and Fatah had reconciled their bitter dispute and the Palestine Liberation Organization, from which Hamas is excluded, was “reformed” to include it.

Such goals seem at the moment rather distant.

Mr. Carter had tried to get Hamas to agree to several other requests and all were turned down. Those included a prisoner exchange and declaring a 30-day unilateral cease-fire with Israel — Hamas fires rockets on Israeli towns and communities in an effort to hurt and kill civilians. On Monday a 4-year-old child was injured from shrapnel after a rocket hit a home on a kibbutz and caused damage, the Israeli army announced.

Mr. Meshal said at his news conference that, through Egypt, he and Israel were working on a possible mutual cease-fire or period of calm so there was no reason to accept Mr. Carter’s suggestion of a unilateral cease-fire.

Mr. Carter said he found the Hamas leadership, including Mr. Meshal, to be clear-thinking, educated people who gave no sign of fanaticism, although he did condemn in harsh terms their use of violence. He said they did not break for prayer, talk of holy land or God. “It was secular talk,” he said.

“They are just as rational as you are,” he said, adding, “The thing that Meshal and I have is that we are both physicists.”

Mr. Carter also said that while he was snubbed by the Israeli leadership over his talks with Hamas, he believes it was due to American pressure that meetings between him and top Israeli leaders were canceled.

In the interview, Mr. Carter said that what he learned about Syrian intentions toward Israel may prove more significant than the Hamas agreement.

He said that Mr. Assad believes there are only a few details left to work out on a full peace treaty but that the Bush administration is discouraging Israel to proceed because of other concerns, especially related to Iraq, that the Americans have with Syria.

“All of our group were surprisingly impressed with his strength and knowledge of the details in contrast to what we had heard from propaganda,” Mr. Carter said of the Syrian president. He emphasized that for Syria, a deal with Israel has to be brokered by the United States to be meaningful.

While Mr. Assad has an alliance with Iran, Mr. Carter believes that the relationship is as an alternative to one with the United States and the West, rather than his first choice. He said he expected Mr. Assad would be willing to separate from that alliance because he wants full peace with Israel.

“He’s willing to put his eggs in that basket of peace with Israel, no matter what Iran thinks,” Mr. Carter said in the interview of Mr. Assad.

Taghreed al-Khodari contributed additional reporting from Gaza.