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Hamas can accept Israel's right to `live,' Carter says

Former US president Jimmy Carter speaks at a press conference in Jerusalem about his talks in Syria and Egypt with Hamas leaders. Photo: EPA

Former US president Jimmy Carter said yesterday that Hamas is prepared to accept the Jewish state’s right to “live as a neighbor next door in peace.”

Hamas is also prepared to accept the outcome of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, provided it is approved in a Palestinian referendum, or by a Palestinian government chosen in new elections, Carter said.

However, a Hamas leader in the Gaza Strip said Hamas wouldn’t be bound by a referendum’s results.

In the past, Hamas officials have said they would establish a “peace in stages” if Israel were to withdraw to the frontiers it held before the 1967 Middle East War. But it has been evasive about how it sees the final borders of a Palestinian state, and has not abandoned its official call for Israel’s destruction.

Carter relayed his message in a speech in Jerusalem after meeting for two days last week with top Hamas leaders in Syria. The speech capped a nine-day visit to the Middle East designed to break the deadlock between Israel and Hamas militants who rule Gaza.

Israel considers Hamas to be a terrorist group and has shunned Carter during his visit because of his meetings with Hamas’ supreme chief, Khaled Mashaal, and other group leaders. In his speech in Jerusalem, Carter urged Israel to negotiate directly with Hamas, saying failure to do so was hampering peace efforts.

“We do not believe that peace is likely and certainly that peace is not sustainable unless a way is found to bring Hamas into the discussions in some way,” he said. “The present strategy of excluding Hamas and excluding Syria is just not working.”

Syria harbors Hamas’ exiled leadership in its capital, Damascus, and supports the Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas who warred with Israel in 2006.

Carter said Hamas wouldn’t undermine Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ efforts to reach a peace deal with Israel, as long as the Palestinian people approved it in a referendum. In such a scenario, he said, Hamas would not oppose a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza.

Hamas leaders “said that they would accept a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders” and they would “accept the right of Israel to live as a neighbor next door in peace,” he said.

The borders he referred to were the frontiers that existed before Israel captured large swaths of Arab lands in 1967.

Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri in Gaza said Hamas’ readiness to put a peace deal to a referendum “does not mean that Hamas is going to accept the result of the referendum.”

Such a referendum, he said, would have to be voted on by Palestinians living all over the world. They number about 9.3 million, including some 4 million living in the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem.

The Israeli and US governments disapprove of Carter’s overtures to Hamas, which they consider to be a terrorist organization.

Over the weekend, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said he did not meet with Carter in Israel because he did not wish to be seen as participating in any negotiations with Hamas.

“The problem is not that I met with Hamas in Syria,” Carter said yesterday. “The problem is that Israel and the United States refuse to meet with someone who must be involved.”

Carter said direct communication between Israel and Hamas could facilitate the release of a captured Israeli soldier, Corporal Gilad Schalit, who has been held in Gaza for nearly two years.

Israel agrees in principle to trade 1,000 Palestinian prisoners for Schalit, but after back-and-forth talks through Egyptian intermediaries, it has approved only 71 of the specific prisoners that Hamas wants freed, he said.

Carter said Hamas has promised to let Schalit send a letter to his parents to assure them he is OK.

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