Carter gets cool reaction from Israelis

Chicago Tribune

JERUSALEM — Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter is getting a cool reception in Israel, where he arrived on Sunday at the start of a nine-day Middle East tour that he said would likely include a meeting with Hamas leaders in Syria.

Carter, a Nobel Peace Prize winner who brokered the first Arab-Israeli peace accord, is being shunned by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Defense Minister Ehud Barak. However, Carter met Sunday with President Shimon Peres, whose position is ceremonial.

Carter also plans to travel to the West Bank and to meet the leaders of Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Jordan on what the Atlanta-based Carter Center called a “study mission” to support Middle East peace efforts.

A spokesman for Olmert declined to comment on the Carter trip, but other Israeli officials said the reason for the cold shoulder here was Carter’s plan to meet Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal in Damascus, a move that has been criticized by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

The United States and Israel consider Hamas a terrorist organization, and are boycotting the militant Islamic group, which has carried out dozens of suicide bombings and whose charter calls for Israel’s destruction. U.S. and Israeli policy is to isolate Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, and pursue peace efforts with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who favors a negotiated settlement with Israel.

One Israeli official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that high-level meetings here with Carter before he goes on to meet Hamas leaders would have “sounded like we are sending a message,” when “we don’t want anything to do with them.”

Carter, who met Sunday with the parents of Cpl. Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier held by Hamas militants in Gaza, told the ABC News program “This Week” that “it’s likely that I will be meeting with the Hamas leaders” in Syria, where he is to see President Bashar Assad.