Hamas and the Palestinians: Punishing the Innocent is a Crime
by Jimmy Carter

Sunday, May 7, 2006 by the International Herald Tribune

Atlanta -- Innocent Palestinian people are being treated like animals,
with the presumption that they are guilty of some crime. Because
they voted for candidates who are members of Hamas, the United
States government has become the driving force behind an apparently
effective scheme of depriving the general public of income, access
to the outside world and the necessities of life.

Overwhelmingly, these are school teachers, nurses, social workers,
police officers, farm families, shopkeepers, and their employees
and families who are just hoping for a better life. Public opinion
polls conducted after the January parliamentary election show that
80 percent of Palestinians still want a peace agreement with Israel
based on the international road map premises. Although Fatah party
members refused to join Hamas in a coalition government, nearly 70
percent of Palestinians continue to support Fatah's leader, Mahmoud
Abbas, as their president.

It is almost a miracle that the Palestinians have been able to
orchestrate three elections during the past 10 years, all of which
have been honest, fair, strongly contested, without violence and with
the results accepted by winners and losers. Among the 62 elections
that have been monitored by us at the Carter Center, these are among
the best in portraying the will of the people.

One clear reason for the surprising Hamas victory for legislative seats
was that the voters were in despair about prospects for peace. With
American acquiescence, the Israelis had avoided any substantive peace
talks for more than five years, regardless of who had been chosen to
represent the Palestinian side as interlocutor.

The day after his party lost the election, Abbas told me that his
own struggling government could not sustain itself financially with
their daily lives and economy so severely disrupted, and access
from Palestine to Israel and the outside world almost totally
restricted. They were already $900 million in debt and had no way to
meet the payroll for the following month. The additional restraints
imposed on the new government are a planned and deliberate catastrophe
for the citizens of the occupied territories, in hopes that Hamas
will yield to the economic pressure.

With all their faults, Hamas leaders have continued to honor a
temporary cease-fire, or hudna, during the past 18 months, and their
spokesman told me that this "can be extended for two, 10 or even 50
years if the Israelis will reciprocate." Although Hamas leaders have
refused to recognize the state of Israel while their territory is being
occupied, Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh has expressed approval for
peace talks between Abbas and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel. He
added that if these negotiations result in an agreement that can be
accepted by Palestinians, then the Hamas position regarding Israel
would be changed.

Regardless of these intricate and long-term political
interrelationships, it is unconscionable for Israel, the United
States and others under their influence to continue punishing the
innocent and already persecuted people of Palestine. The Israelis are
withholding approximately $55 million a month in taxes and customs
duties that, without dispute, belong to the Palestinians. Although
some Arab nations have allocated funds for humanitarian purposes to
alleviate human suffering, the U.S. government is threatening the
financial existence of any Jordanian or other bank that dares to
transfer this assistance into Palestine.

There is no way to predict what will happen in Palestine, but it would
be a tragedy for the international community to abandon the hope that a
peaceful coexistence of two states in the Holy Land is possible. Like
Egypt and all other Arab nations before the Camp David Accords of
1978, and the Palestine Liberation Organization before the Oslo peace
agreement of 1993, Hamas has so far refused to recognize the sovereign
state of Israel as legitimate, with a right to live in peace. This is a
matter of great concern to all of us, and the international community
needs to probe for an acceptable way out of this quagmire. There is
no doubt that Israelis and Palestinians both want a durable two-state
solution, but depriving the people of Palestine of their basic human
rights just to punish their elected leaders is not a path to peace.

Former President Jimmy Carter is founder of the Carter Center,
a nonprofit organization working for peace and health worldwide.