Posted 1:14 PM
by Mary
Carter comes back from Hamas with an olive branch
Aijaz Ahmad: Carter including Hamas in peace process is itself a major development
Wednesday April 23rd, 2008
David Newman, professor of political geography at Israel’s Ben-Gurion University, tells The Real News Network that Hamas’ claim that it will respect a peace deal with Israel—if it is accepted in a vote by Palestinians—represents “a more moderate position” than what the group has previously expressed.
The Real News senior analyst Aijaz Ahmad concludes that Hamas’ new, slightly softened stance could represent “a major breakthrough” in the ongoing standoff between Israel and the Islamic militant group.
David Newman is a Professor of Political Geography and a Senior Research Fellow at Ben-Gurion University in Israel, where he founded the Department of Politics and Government. Editor of the international journal, Geopolitics, and former columnist for The Jerusalem Post.
excerpt:
AIJAZ AHMAD, SENIOR ANALYST, THE REAL NEWS: A very important thing to understand in this context is just who Jimmy Carter is. He's not only a former president of the United States, but the one president who negotiated between Israel and Egypt the most durable peace agreement that there has ever been between Israel and the Arabs. And it is because of that agreement that there has never been, since then, an Arab-Israeli war. So painting him today as somebody who's somehow opposed to Israel, particularly sympathetic to Palestinians, and so on is really contrary to historical fact. As the head of Carter Center, he has been intimately involved in observing the two key elections in Palestine, both 2005 and 2006, and therefore understands the political landscape.
The principal achievement of President Carter during this trip is that he has tried to establish the fact that it is both necessary and legitimate to speak to Hamas, contrary to the position taken not only by the Israeli government, but also all the western governments. The criterion for legitimacy for Carter is simple: you don't have to like Hamas; you don't have to agree with Hamas; you simply have to recognize the fact that Hamas won the elections of 2006 and thus represents a very vast amount of Palestinian public opinion. In talking to Hamas, President Carter seems to have extracted from them a very interesting public statement, namely that President Abbas has the right to negotiate any peace agreement with Israel that he considers appropriate, and if the Palestinian people accept that agreement, Hamas will accept it too. Finally, President Carter has also helped clarify and make public a position that Hamas has been expressing for a long time but has not been covered in the media. What it says is that Hamas would be willing to live side by side with Israel as a neighbor and would even offer a complete truce for ten years. This is a major breakthrough, I believe, and this should be taken up by the United States, the western powers, and anyone else who wants to see peace established between Palestinians and Israelis.
Labels: Carter, hamas, Middle East
