Jimmy Carter Gets It Right

The United States reaction to the recent Palestinian elections has been just plain bad policy. First of all, you do not get people to meet you half way by isolating them, as Jimmy points out:

This common commitment to eviscerate the government of elected Hamas officials by punishing private citizens may accomplish this narrow purpose, but the likely results will be to alienate the already oppressed and innocent Palestinians, to incite violence, and to increase the domestic influence and international esteem of Hamas. It will certainly not be an inducement to Hamas or other militants to moderate their policies.

As soon as this election was over, Condi Rice was out there saying that we can't deal with Hamas because they don't recognize Israel's right to exist. You didn't hear the Hamas leaders saying that, you heard Israel and the US reminding the world of that. It seems to me that they realized that policy wasn't going to fly as the ruling party and as long as they didn't start shouting it again, we could work with them until they officially removed it from their party platform, which I believe would have happened in the next year, IF we had done things right. We could have looked for ways to work with the new government by finding things we had in common and while still letting the world know that their stated claims were just plain wrong.

Isolating a group of people is not a good way to get them to come over to your side, the Palestinian people aren't going to give us the benefit of the doubt on this. They are going to look at us as hypocrites for Bush stumping all over the world with his fake democracy-talk then being pissy when his side doesn't win a fair election. We also lose face in the eyes of the Palestinians because we’re supporting the corrupt government they just threw out.

I actually do agree with one of Bush's statements on this;

"It's a wake-up call to the leadership. Obviously, people were not happy with the status quo. And so the elections should open the eyes of the old guard there in the Palestinian territories. The people are demanding honest government. The people want services.”

I’m glad we could agree on something, George. So, recognizing this fact, we are going to cut off all aid to the Palestinians Authority, basically the only revenue they receive, and let their workers go unpaid and their poor go hungry? If Bush really believes this wouldn't the proper policy to be work with government of the people with whom we, in theory, agree?

I think it would serve out best interests to walk with a little more humility and honor the decisions made by the Palestinian people, work with Hamas where we agree and lean on them to change where we differ. I believe if we had taken this path then we could have gotten them to acknowledge the right of Israel to exist within a reasonable amount of time.