Jimmy Carter’s peace mission achieves little

Hamas prefers doing business with Mideastern leaders, an analyst said.

JERUSALEM (AP) — With his Mideast shuttle winding down Monday, Jimmy Carter picked up the phone in Jerusalem and called the Hamas boss in Damascus one more time.

Halt the rocket fire on Israel for a month, without preconditions, and gain some international good will, the former president said he told Khaled Mashaal, supreme leader of the Islamic militant group.

But Mashaal, who met with Carter for seven hours in Damascus over the weekend, said no.

“I did the best I could,” Carter said of his last-minute attempt to change Mashaal’s mind on the rockets. “They turned me down, and I think they’re wrong.”

This meant Carter was leaving the region without concrete concessions from Hamas.

Mashaal made upbeat statements about peace with Israel, and Carter said Monday that Hamas is willing to accept Israel as a “neighbor next door” one day.

Hours later, however, Mashaal sent mixed messages. He stressed that though the militants would accept a state in the 1967 borders, meaning alongside Israel, the group would never outright recognize the Jewish state.

And there were no signs of forsaking violence. A 4-year-old Israeli boy was hurt by rocket fire from Hamas-ruled Gaza on Monday, and a leader of the Hamas military wing said his group would step up attacks in coming days.

Analysts said Hamas apparently decided to send off Carter largely empty-handed, despite the possibility he might pave an opening to a hostile West, because it prefers doing business with leaders in the region.

Egypt has been shuttling between Israel and Hamas for nearly two years, to try to broker a cease-fire, a prisoner swap and an opening of Gaza’s border crossings.

Defending his trip, Carter said peace in the region will only be possible if Israel and the U.S. start talking to Hamas and Syria, which hosts and supports several militant groups. He also called on the Bush administration to push harder to renew Israeli-Syrian peace talks.

“The present strategy of excluding Hamas and excluding Syria is just not working,” said Carter, who brokered a historic 1979 peace treaty between Israel and Egypt.

Over the weekend, Carter spent seven hours talking to Hamas’ top leadership.

He said he won a written pledge from Hamas’ five-member politburo, led by Mashaal, to accept any peace deal with Israel, even if Hamas disagrees with some of the terms, as long as it’s approved in a Palestinian referendum.

Carter said Hamas leaders told him they’re also ready to accept the Jewish state’s right to one day “live as a neighbor next door in peace.” Since its founding 21 years ago, Hamas has carried out scores of suicide attacks in Israel and has fired hundreds of rockets from Gaza at Israeli border towns.

The pledge obtained by Carter did not reflect a new Hamas position, though it’s significant that it was made in writing. Hamas leaders have said in the past they would establish “peace in stages” if Israel were to withdraw to the borders it held before the 1967 Mideast war. Hamas 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.

The Hamas promise does not say who would participate in a peace referendum. Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza would be far more likely to approve a deal than exiles in camps in Lebanon and Syria, especially if a treaty does not affirm the “right of return” of refugees to homes in what is now Israel.