Ex-US-Präsident Jimmy Carter beendet Nahost-Reise / Jimmy Carter Was Right to Meet with Hamas
Carter: "Hamas und Syrien auszuschließen, funktioniert einfach nicht"
Carter: Israel muß mit Hamas reden
Früherer US-Präsident beendet Nahost-Reise. Palästinenser zu Friedenslösung bereit *
Der frühere US-Präsident James Carter hat Israel am Montag (21. April) zu direkten Gesprächen mit der Hamas-Bewegung aufgefordert. Die gegenwärtige Strategie, Hamas und Syrien auszuschließen, funktioniere einfach nicht, sagte Carter in Jerusalem zum Abschluß eines neuntägigen Aufenthalts in der Region. Der Friedensnobelpreisträger hatte sich am Wochenende mit Hamas-Chef Chaled Meschaal, der im syrischen Damaskus im Exil lebt, getroffen. Carter war dafür in den USA wie in Israel heftig kritisiert worden. Seinen Kritikern entgegnete der Politiker: »Das Problem besteht nicht darin, daß ich mich in Syrien mit der Hamas getroffen habe«, sagte er. »Das Problem besteht darin, daß Israel und die Vereinigten Staaten jemanden nicht treffen wollen, der einbezogen werden muß.«
Die Hamas ist nach Angaben Carters zu einer Waffenruhe im Gazastreifen sowie zur Anerkennung des Existenzrechts Israels bereit. Es gebe keinen Zweifel daran, daß sowohl die arabische Welt als auch die Hamas das Recht Israels akzeptieren würden, friedlich in den Grenzen von 1967 zu existieren. Die Hamas werde die Bemühungen des palästinensischen Präsidenten Mahmud Abbas um ein Friedensabkommen mit Israel nicht torpedieren und einen palästinensischen Staat im Westjordanland und dem Gazastreifen akzeptieren. Die Organisation fordert laut Carter allerdings, daß ein von Abbas ausgehandeltes Abkommen der Bevölkerung zur Abstimmung vorgelegt wird.
In der Nähe von Beit Hanun, im Norden des Gazastreifens, wurde am Montag morgen bei einem Schußwechsel mit israelischen Soldaten ein Mitglied der Hamas-nahen Essedin-Al-Kassam-Brigaden getötet.
Das Palästinensische Zentrum für Menschenrechte (PCHR) teilte gestern (21. April) mit, daß ein am 6.April im Gazastreifen getöteter vierjähriger Palästinenser nicht, wie zuvor angenommen, durch Schüsse israelischer Soldaten getötet wurde. Der Junge sei durch die Explosion einer Granate ums Leben gekommen, die militante Palästinenser abgefeuert hätten. (AP/AFP/jW)
* Aus: junge Welt, 22. April 2008
Jimmy Carter Was Right to Meet with Hamas
By Joshua Holland **
Former President Jimmy Carter, who won a Nobel Peace
Prize for what the prize committee described as his
"untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to
international conflicts," is touring the Middle East,
as a private citizen, in a bid to revive interest in a
moribund peace process between Israel and the
Palestinians. He's doing so at a time when their
decades-long conflict is growing in intensity and
distrust on both sides is running high.
As a result, Carter is once again under fire from
conservatives. Last week, Republican Rep. Sue Myrick
(NC) went so far as to call for the former president's
passport to be revoked on Fox News.
Carter's crime was to sit-down with leaders of Hamas
last week to explore the possibility of waging peace in
the Middle East. For many Israel-hawks, it wasn't a
first offense; Carter is guilty of viewing the
Palestinians as human beings and for condemning human
rights abuses on both sides of the conflict between
Israelis and Palestinians. "Any side that kills
innocent people is guilty of terrorism," he told an
audience at Cairo's American University after his
sit-down with members of Hamas.
Carter rejects the short-sighted idea that negotiating
with one's enemies legitimizes or rewards them for
their actions. According to the same logic, when a
police department sends a hostage negotiator to talk
down a gun-toting lunatic who's barricaded himself in a
house somewhere, that department would be guilty of
"legitimizing" armed lunatics. It's a ludicrous idea on
its face, but one that's essentially embraced by much
of the American foreign policy establishment when it
comes to the international arena.
It's an ideological construct that defies both common
sense and the "best practices" that have been developed
in the field of conflict resolution -- best practices
that were borne of hard experience. What Carter seems
to understand, and his detractors appear unable to
grasp, is that there is absolutely no chance of
establishing and implementing a peace agreement between
the Israelis and Palestinians without offering Hamas a
seat at the negotiating table.
One of the most obvious lessons from the international
community's efforts at conflict resolution is that
getting signatures on a peace deal is only half the
battle (if that much). Implementing peace treaties is
much more difficult, and recent history is littered
with wreckage of agreements that didn't hold.
One of the ways to almost guarantee that a peace
agreement will be impossible to implement is to
negotiate it without bringing all of the combatants to
the table. Israel and Fatah (the faction of Mahmoud
Abbas, Chairman of the Palestinian Authority) can
negotiate a deal, but if Hamas isn't invested in it,
then they'll have no incentive to comply with its
terms.
One doesn't need to have warm feelings towards Hamas to
recognize this reality. The idea that one can choose
one's negotiating partner, as opposed to negotiating
with all of the parties to a conflict, is a fantasy.
The fact that Hamas won a decisive victory in the 2006
Palestinian elections and is the legitimate voice of a
majority of the Palestinian people reduces the notion
to a bit of right-wing idealism that's thoroughly
divorced from historic experience.
Carter, whose recent book Palestine: Peace not
Apartheid ruffled many right-wing feathers, remains the
only American president to have actually brokered a
lasting peace deal between Israel and an Arab state.
His work at Camp David in the 1970s not only led to a
sustainable peace deal between Israel and Egypt, it set
a precedent that was followed by other Arab states and
eventually an offer by all of the Arab states for full
recognition of Israeli sovereignty in exchange for
Israel's return to its pre-1967 borders. In other
words, not only has Carter contributed to the region's
stability, he's also done more to improve Israel's
security than all of his neoconservative naysayers
combined.
A common refrain among American and Israeli hawks is
that Hamas must recognize Israel's legitimacy before
they can get a seat at the table. While that sounds
reasonable on its face, in reality it's asking Hamas to
accept a key Israeli demand before negotiations begin.
Meanwhile, Israel continues to build new settlements in
the Occupied Territories, and continues its brutal
siege of the Gaza strip. In other words, the position
held by much of the Washington establishment is that
Palestinians must make concessions before negotiations
begin, but Israel is free to continue creating "facts
on the ground," even when it's in violation of
international law. It's a pipedream to believe such a
position can lead to anything more than extended
bloodshed.
Of course, what separates Carter from his detractors
may be that he has a genuine desire for establishing
peace in the Middle East, while many "pro-Israel" hawks
favor (an impossible) military solution to the
conflict, with Israel crushing the Palestinians into
oblivion.
If that is their position, they should be upfront about
it and admit that they oppose a negotiated settlement
to the conflict rather than lashing out blindly at
anyone who is serious about making peace.
** Joshua Holland is an AlterNet staff writer.
AlterNet Posted on April 21, 2008, Printed on April 21, 2008
www.alternet.org/story/82936/
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