Hamas agrees to '67 borders/Isreali state or How to politicize anything

[EMUJeff]

Here is an article from the AP new service...
EMUJeff

Updated 1:47 p.m. ET, Mon., April. 21, 2008</SPAN>
DAMASCUS, Syria - The leader of Hamas said Monday that his Palestinian militant group would offer Israel a 10-year "hudna," or truce, as implicit proof of recognition of Israel if it withdrew from all lands it seized in the 1967 Middle East War.
Khaled Mashaal told The Associated Press that he made the offer to former U.S. President Jimmy Carter in talks on Saturday. "We have offered a truce if Israel withdraws to the 1967 borders, a truce of 10 years as a proof of recognition," Mashaal said.
In his comments Monday, Mashaal used the Arabic word "hudna," meaning truce, which is more concrete than "tahdiya" — a period of calm — which Hamas often uses to describe a simple cease-fire.
"Hudna" implies recognition of the other party's existence.
Mashaal said Hamas would accept a Palestinian state limited to the lands Israel seized in 1967 — that is, the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem. But he said the group would never outright formally recognize Israel.
Carter comments
Earlier, Carter said that Hamas is prepared to accept the right of Israel to “live as a neighbor next door in peace.”
Carter said the group promised it 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 the past, Hamas officials have said they would establish a “peace in stages” if Israel were to withdraw to the borders it held before 1967. 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.
There was no immediate reaction from Israel to Hamas' truce offer.
Israel, which evacuated Gaza in 2005, has accepted the idea of a Palestinian state there and in much of the West Bank. But it has resisted Palestinian demands that it return to its 1967 frontiers.
In Washington, the State Department dismissed Carter’s assessment of his meetings, saying there was no indication Hamas wanted peace with Israel.
“What is clear to us is that there certainly is no change in Hamas’ position,” said deputy spokesman Tom Casey. “It does not recognize Israel’s right to exist, it has not eschewed or walked away from terrorism and violence, nor has it said it will honor any of the previous agreements that have been made with the Israeli government.”
Carter’s comments came after his much criticized meetings with the top Hamas leaders in Syria in last week.
Over the weekend, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said he decided not to meet with Carter in Israel because he does not wish to be seen as participating in any negotiations with Hamas.
Carter also urged Israel to engage in direct negotiations with the Islamic militant group, saying it was a “problem” that Israel and the United States refuse to meet with Hamas. Both governments consider it a terrorist organization.
'Problem' with Israel, U.S., Carter says
“The problem is not that I met with Hamas in Syria,” he said. “The problem is that Israel and the United States refuse to meet with someone who must be involved.”
“There’s no doubt that both the Arab world and Hamas will accept Israel’s right to exist in peace within 1967 borders,” he said.
In his comments Monday, Carter said Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking has “regressed” since a U.S.-hosted Mideast conference in Annapolis, Md., in November.
Israel has been negotiating directly with Abbas, who heads a moderate government based in the West Bank. Abbas lost control of the Gaza Strip last June, when Hamas violently seized control of that territory.
Carter said Hamas has promised to let a captured Israeli soldier send a letter to his parents, and said the militants “made clear to us that they would accept an interim cease-fire in the Gaza Strip.”
However, Carter said Hamas rejected his specific proposal for a month long unilateral cease-fire.

[EMUJeff]

Then, today, this from the state department...
EMUJeff

KUWAIT CITY - U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice criticized former U.S. President Jimmy Carter on Tuesday for holding talks with Hamas and said she had advised him against it.
Attending a regional meeting on Iraq's security and future Tuesday, Rice contradicted Carter's assertions that he never got a clear signal from the State Department. Rice told reporters that the United States thought the visit could confuse the message that the country will not deal with Hamas.
"I just don't want there to be any confusion," Rice said. "The United States is not going to deal with Hamas and we had certainly told President Carter that we did not think meeting with Hamas was going to help" further a political settlement between Israel and the Palestinians.
"We counseled President Carter against going to the region and particularly against having contact with Hamas," she added.

Hamas controls the Gaza Strip and is regarded by the United States as a terror group.

Carter says top Hamas leaders told him during seven hours of talks in Damascus over the weekend that they are willing to live next to Israel, but a top Hamas official said the group would never outright recognize the Jewish state.
Carter won no specific concessions from Hamas. He defended his trip during remarks Monday in Jerusalem. He said he failed to convince the top Hamas boss, Khaled Mashaal, that he could gain international goodwill if he stopped rocket fire on Israel for one month.
Carter: 'Best I could'
"I did the best I could," Carter said. "They turned me down, and I think they're wrong."

In an interview with NPR, Carter said the State Department did not warn him off the trip. A State Department spokesman in Washington took issue with that on Monday, and Rice was more blunt in her account Tuesday.

Rice had heard questions about Carter's meetings several times during two days of Iraq-themed meetings in the Mideast, with some diplomats wondering whether the Bush administration was talking to Hamas through the back door or contemplating a different policy in the future.

Rice said U.S. policy remains that it will deal only with the elected Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, and his West Bank-based government as it tried to help Israel and the Palestinians broker terms for an independent Palestinian state.
Hamas softens demands?
Meanwhile, a Hamas official on Tuesday said the militant group had softened its demands for a cease-fire with Israel.
Spokesman Ghazi Hamad said Hamas is now prepared for a partial truce that would only include the Gaza Strip.
The group previously has demanded the West Bank be included in any deal. Still, it hopes a Gaza truce will eventually spread to the West Bank as well.
In return, Hamas wants Israel and Egypt to open their trade and passenger crossings with Gaza. The border has been sealed since Hamas violently seized control of Gaza last June.
Israel also considers Hamas a terrorist group.

[EMUJeff]

Here's the thing. How is it that the State Department can spend all its time on explaining why things can't be done?
I don't know if the Rice and the Administration have a vested interest in keeping a diplomatic trip from being successful or if they are jealous or what. Ultimately, it doesn't matter.
All Rice, a very smart person by all accounts, did by providing backlash was prove the US isn't committed to peace if their not the ones who did the dealing.
I'm honestly not trying to make this a Republican/Democrat issue because I feel international politics is about more than party unity. I am just saying if the guy who helped lead the brokered deal between Egypt and Isreal can pull of 10 years of peaceful coexistence than who is Rice or anyone else to pull the rug out. We must remember that at the time of the agreement between Sadat, who gave his life for this deal literally, and Begin, both countries were just 11 years from the 1967 invasion that had been led by Egypt. And we must remember that Since that 1978 agreement there have been 30 solid years of peace on the once highly disputed Sinai Penninsula.
All Carter proved is that talking to your enemies SOMETIMES means peace. And if you have them AT THE TABLE good things have the potential to happen. Just because this government has chosen bombs and threats over diplomacy until recently when their legacy is on the line doesn't mean they should be running down someone elses success.
There is a wonderful program available fromt he BBC called "Yes, Prime Minister" in which the strategy of their version of the state department is similarly superceded by a cleric who obtains the release of a hostage the government said couldn't be helped. One of the government employees responds to the Prime Ministers question "I thought the (state) department said there was no way we could secure the release of this girl?"
To which the functionary replies, "And if we'd left it to them their wouldn't have been."
In any crisis the government doesn't want to resolve for political or bureaucratic reasons there are four stages of response...
1.) Denial. "No, there is no crisis. Nothing to see here. Keep moving."
2.) Contemplation. "Well, there may be a crisis, but there's nothing we should do."
3.) Impotence. "There is a crisis but we shouldn't get involved. But there's nothing we can do."
4.) Acceptance. "Well maybe there is something we could have done, but its too late now."
EMUJeff