Jimmy Carter: Include Hamas in Israel-Palestinian peace talks

[bemildred]

Likudniks don't scare former United States president Jimmy Carter. On the contrary: The electoral turnaround of 1977 that brought them to power for the first time enabled Carter to be inscribed in the history books as the leader who facilitated the first peace agreement between Israelis and Arabs. In his new book, "We Can Have Peace in the Holy Land" (Simon & Schuster), Carter relates that neither he nor America's Jewish community knew what to expect from prime minister Menachem Begin, a former underground fighter who had acquired a bad name for himself as a war-mongering fanatic. Egyptian president Anwar Sadat reported to Carter that he had asked Eastern European leaders who knew the new prime minister whether Begin was an honest man and a strong person. According to him, the answers were in the affirmative.

In a telephone interview before this week's election, I asked Carter what he thinks of Likud chairman Benjamin Netanyahu. From his office at the Carter Center in Atlanta, the 39th U.S. president answered calmly that Netanyahu is a practical politician, and that if a proposed peace agreement wins broad support among the Israeli public, the Likud leader would not turn his back on it, and would be "constructive."

Carter does remember, however, that he had differences of opinion with Netanyahu, who argued - in contrast to Ariel Sharon, who as Begin's agriculture minister, enthusiastically supported a peace agreement with Egypt - that relinquishing Sinai would be harmful to Israel. Still, Carter thinks it is also important to note that during Netanyahu's first term as prime minister, he sent out feelers to Syria regarding the Golan Heights. The need for an immediate renewal of Israel's peace process with Syria, as well as with the Palestinians and Lebanon, was one of the topics of the conversation last month between the 84-year-old Nobel Peace Prize laureate and the newly elected 44th U.S. president, Barack Obama. The elderly peace activist says he came away with the feeling that he had burst through an open door.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1063765.html

[Igel]

1. I have a question.

I followed the stuff with Carter, Begin, and Sadat in the late '70s. I don't remember Netanyahu.

He was in grad school at the time, then a consultant. He wasn't in politics, at least not that I can find, until '82--then as a deputy something-or-other at the Iraeli embassy in DC, if you want to call that "politics" (political, to be sure, but I have trouble calling most diplomatic personnel "politicians"). By then half of the Sinai was already turned over to Egypt and the rest was in the process of being turned over.

What, exactly, *was* Netanyahu's role in the late '70s in the Sadat/Begin negotiations? Or did he make the argument against the return of Sinai retrospectively? Or was it an op-ed piece?

[azurnoir]

2. That Hamas must be included in any peace talks

IMO is just a "no brainer" they are a major player that is a fact, it is not a matter of "liking" them, supporting them, approving of them it is a matter of realism to do anything else to keep pretending that they do exist or somehow do not count is like playing solataire with 47 cards a no winner every time