How grown-ups do politics

For the benefit of Messers Olmert, Bush, Cheney, Dr Rice, and many others, here's how the grown-ups do diplomacy.




Jimmy Carter, doing what 64 per cent of Israelis want to see done, but what their government and the oh-so "pro-Israeli" US government refuses to do: talking to Hamas.

For the uninitiated, talking to people is how armed conflicts are brought to a conclusion. The alternatives are trying to (a) obliterate your enemy, or (b) demand their total surrender and keep the killing going until they accept.

Since Carter has secured Hamas' consent to any future agreement between Israel and the PLO that resulted in a Palestinian state on the legitimate international borders, and that was ratified by the Palestinian public in a referendum, I think we can deduce that Carter's way works.

Of course, the comparison is a little unfair. Carter wants peace. The US and Israeli government want victory, and apparently don't much care how many people die before they get it (and they definitely don't want a return to the legitimate borders- they want to keep what they stole). But Carter's efforts have now exposed those governments' belligerence for all to see. They pretended they didn't have a "partner for peace" and their bluff has now been called.

See also Carter being interviewed by the BBC's Jeremy Paxman here. Paxman is not afraid to put the boot in when unimpressed with an interviewee. Carter's opponents have tried to paint him as beyond the pale for his peace efforts this past week. The gentle ride he gets from this branch of the Western establishment suggests that the need to talk to Hamas is becoming a mainstream position. US-Israeli rejectionism is becoming less and less tenable.