Jimmy Carter, who has long sought to achieve his rightful position in the pantheon of U.S. presidents, has finally achieved his goal. His embrace Friday of Hamas chieftain Khaled Meshaal puts the former leader on par with British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, who dealt similarly with Adolf Hitler. Both “peace” missions were ill-conceived and actually accomplished harm, legitimizing — for the moment — evil incarnate. Hitler’s Nazi Germany plunged the world into the most horrific war of our time; Hamas is an avowed enemy of the United States (“the Great Satan”) and Israel, the only long-standing democratic ally the U.S. has in a region of autocracies.
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That Carter would defy the wishes of both Congress and the president in meeting with a group the U.S. has defined as “foreign terrorist organization” since 1995 demonstrates, at best, a tremendous lack of judgment and, at worst, something far more sinister. He says he went as a representative of the Carter Center, his charitable foundation, and not as a former president or representative of the U.S. government. The proposition is absurd on its face, since Carter’s ex-president status is not something he can take off and put on as he chooses. He further justifies the foray as an effort to promote peace in the region, portraying himself as a conduit of peace between Israel and Hamas, harkening back to his 1978 role in forging a peace agreement between Israel and Egypt. But Carter forgets the cardinal rule of negotiations — willing parties on both sides must come to the bargaining table. Israel has proven its bona fides in this regard; unfortunately, Hamas has done just the opposite.
Hamas is committed to the destruction of the state of Israel and has no qualms about murdering innocent women and children to achieve this end. The day before Carter met with Meshaal, Hamas foreign minister Mahmoud al-Zahar cited Hamas’s goal of “redressing the material crimes of 1948,” the year Israel declared statehood, in an opinion piece in the
Washington Post. After Hamas won the 2006 Palestinian parliamentary elections, the U.S., United Nations, European Union, and Russia jointly called on Hamas to renounce terror, recognize Israel’s right to exist, and affirm the previous agreements between the Palestinian Authority and Israel. Hamas has categorically rejected all three conditions and continues to plot terrorist attacks and enable other groups to launch rockets at Israeli civilians. Carter trumpeted the success of his mission on Monday by claiming that Hamas had agreed to a two-state solution, only to have Hamas reaffirm later that same day that they did not recognize Israel’s right to exist and that the side-by-side co-existence of a Palestinian state with a Jewish state would be “transitional.” How can Israel negotiate with such an organization?
