Jimmy Carter in Syria: Striving for Peace or In Bed with the Enemy?Gilad Chudler

Last month, former president of the United States of America Jimmy Carter flew out to Damascus and held talks with Hamas – a radical Islamic group that legally came to power in the 2006 Palestinian Parliamentary elections.

Following his meeting with the exiled leader of Hamas, Khaled Mashaal, there has been a flurry of protests and support from the international media. Countless forums and blogs have been featuring heated debates revolving around the former president’s most recent foray into independent peacekeeping. The time has come for one more journalist to take a stab at what the effects of Jimmy Carter’s visit will have and whether or not he was justified in his most recent diplomatic efforts.

As far as this writer is concerned, there are several issues to take into account with this case. They are as follows:

-The outlash from the political right in the US Congress has been shameful. Sue Myrick, R-N.C., lobbied Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to revoke Jimmy Carter’s passport. That’s correct. A member of the US Congress actually lobbied the government to revoke the passport of a former president. The same president who in the 1970’s brokered the most ground-breaking and long lasting peace agreement in the history of the Middle East between Israel and Egypt.

Many folks tend to forget that the reason Israel receives so much money from the United States is simply a result of a treaty that Jimmy Carter, the supposed Israel-hating, apartheid accusing devil personally brokered.

-Although some of the criticism from the conservative right has, perhaps, been a touch heavy-handed, there must be room to chastise Jimmy Carter for embarking on a diplomatic quest that should be reserved for a current not former, member of the United States government. This brings me to my next point.

-Let’s not forget who put the Palestinians up to a proper, democratic election in the first place. It certainly was not any country that the US deems as harboring terrorist organizations, nor was it by a country that the US even deems as an enemy. So who did set up the vote? Oh right, I remember! It was the United States of America!

If the United States is going to continue to be a world leader, it must stand by its democratic principles. How can a country, that claims to believe in democracy so deeply, choose to invade other non-democratic countries in an effort to keep the world “safe,” support a fair election in a democratically-starved region and not keep up some sort of dialogue with the winner of that election? Everybody knew well before the 2006 Palestinian elections that Hamas had a strong chance of winning. Since they won, the US has chosen to turn their back on them because since Hamas won instead of Fatah, the US put itself in a tough situation: Hamas is considered to be a terrorist organization by the US, Israel and the EU.

This brings me to my final point. Just because many people think that the United States should at least have some kind of channels of communication if not outright open diplomatic ties with Hamas, this does not mean by any stretch of imagination that Israel should. Israel has been at war with Hamas since the organization was created and they should not be expected to have wide open diplomatic discussions with Hamas. Hamas does not recognize Israel’s right to exist and until that point is reversed Israel should not be expected to help out or support a democratically elected government that refuses to accept the right of the neighbor to exist. Their stance is not that Israel should cease their occupation: they wish for the complete destruction of Israel.

So, what does all this mean? There are a couple conclusions that can be taken from these various observations. Was Jimmy Carter wrong for holding talks with Hamas? I will take the stance that Jimmy Carter was absolutely wrong for personally holding talks with Hamas. Jimmy Carter, although a former president of the United States, does not currently speak for America nor its people. By going out on his lone-ranger missions, he only befuddles an already dumbfounding and mindblowingly complicated situation.

Although I believe Carter was wrong for holding the talks with Hamas, I do believe that the United States should be making efforts towards opening communication channels with Hamas. It just doesn’t make sense for the United States to completely turn away from Hamas. Fatah, who is now the closest thing to an ally Israel and the United States has ever seen from the Palestinians, was originally a terrorist group that went legit. Instead of isolating Hamas and strengthening their position as “noble resistors of imperial hegemony”, opening talks with them would put the spotlight on their government and would “put the ball in their court”. As long as their people are forced to starve and kept in isolation from the outside world, they will have a huge swathe of support. If there were more concerted efforts to incorporate them into a political process, they would almost be forced to moderate their views because otherwise all of their support would disappear. Once a group is legitimized they must start acting like a real political entity lest they lose their hard-fought rise to power.

Although Jimmy Carter’s heart may have been in the right place, his maverick diplomacy has only muddled one of the most confusing political situations in human history. Hopefully, at the very least, people will wake up and realize that we can’t keep beating Hamas into a corner because it only strengthens and legitimizes their malevolent intentions. There was a time in US history where carrots-and-sticks ruled the diplomatic arena. It’s time to reintroduce a few carrots back into the scene.