Jimmy Carter, the Saudi-paid CEO of the Saudi-financed Carter Center has decided to meet with Hamas head Khaled Meshaal in Damascus, despite pleas from the Israeli government and several members of the US Congress, and against the recommendation of the US State Department.
But Carter does not take orders from the State Department or Congress, and he certainly doesn’t have great respect for the government of what he calls an ‘apartheid state’, so off he goes.
“I feel quite at ease in doing this,” Carter said. “I think there’s no doubt in anyone’s mind that, if Israel is ever going to find peace with justice concerning the relationship with their next-door neighbors, the Palestinians, that Hamas will have to be included in the process.”
Although he said the meeting would not be a negotiation, he outlined distinct goals.
“I think that it’s very important that at least someone meet with the Hamas leaders to express their views, to ascertain what flexibility they have, to try to induce them to stop all attacks against innocent civilians in Israel and to cooperate with the Fatah as a group that unites the Palestinians, maybe to get them to agree to a cease-fire – things of this kind,” he said…
“I’ve been meeting with Hamas leaders for years,” Carter said. — Jerusalem Post
Has he talked to them about the Hamas Covenant, which says that it is a Muslim’s duty to kill Jews, that not one inch of ‘Palestinian land’ may be possessed by non-Muslims, and that “the only solution to the Palestinian question is jihad”?
Israel refuses to negotiate with Hamas because it is impossible to compromise with someone whose bottom line is your destruction. Unless Carter is capable of getting Meshaal to repudiate these principles, nothing good can come of their meetings.
But plenty of evil can. Hamas can gain respectability and sanction; instead of a gang of terrorist murderers who have killed literally hundreds of Israelis in shootings, suicide bombings, stabbings and missile strikes, Hamas takes on the cloak of a responsible governing power, which represents the half-million Palestinians of Gaza (and which has many supporters in the West Bank as well).
Hamas wants respectability above all, so that it can eventually receive aid from the West and be allowed to rejoin a ‘unity government’ with Fatah, permitting it to take over the West Bank as it did Gaza — and incidentally take possession of the huge amount of weapons pumped into Fatah by the US.
But there are other interests at work here as well. The Sunni Hamas’ present isolation has forced it to turn to Shiite Iran for financing and weapons. A return to at least partial respectability would reduce this dependence, exactly as Carter’s Saudi bosses wish.
So Carter is actually acting to further Saudi aims, helping the Kingdom gain control of the Palestinian movement, or at least keep it away from Iran.
Hamas supporters sometimes say that there is no reason that it should be marginalized. After all, didn’t it win a majority in the Palestinian Authority government by ‘free and fair’ elections (which Carter monitored)?
If you think that the legitimization of Hamas is a good thing, keep this in mind: if the genocidal Hamas is the legitimate voice of the Palestinian people, then Israel is at war — not just with Hamas, but with the Palestinians.
Because there can’t be peace with someone whose bottom line is your destruction.
Technorati Tags: Jimmy Carter, Hamas, Israel, Saudi Arabia