Former President Meets With Enemies
By: Thomas Suiter
By: Thomas Suiter
Founded in 1987, the Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas, is a Palestinian Sunni Islamist militant organization as well as a political party. It currently holds power in the Palestinian Authority giving it significant military and social influence over the Middle East . On Thursday, former United States president Jimmy Carter met with senior officials of the Hamas in Cairo , Egypt to discuss with them peace between the Palestinians and Israelis. Since the Hamas is recognized as a “terrorist organization” by the Unites States, Israel, and the European Union, Carter received significant flak for his meeting with both Mahmoud al-Zahar and Saeed Seyam. The majority of their nearly three hour conversation regarded the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the West Bank being a landlocked territory mostly bordered by Israel but Jordan to the east. The Gaza Strip is a twenty-five mile long region running along the Mediterranean Sea , and both territories are target to frequent Hamas militant rocket attacks as well as suicide bombings. Israel seized and annexed the West Bank from Jordan during the Six-Day War in 1967. Although under Israeli jurisdiction, the West Bank is home to an Arab majority populous, and you can see why there might be civil unrest. Like the West Bank, the Gaza Strip was also a prize taken from the Palestinians by Israel in 1967. However, the Israeli thirty-eight year occupation ended in 2005 with the IDF still controlling airspace and territorial waters while the Israeli government runs the tax system, entry of foreigners, and imports/exports. September 12, 2005, marked the day that the Palestinian Authority took complete administrative authority over the Strip as well as its citizens, but lately on the Strip as well as the West Bank, the powerful Hamas has not been only clashing with Israel but another Palestinian insurgent group known as Fatah, or the Palestinian National Liberation Movement. The two are rival political parties who often take their disputes to guerilla warfare in the streets. The worst of the fighting has taken place in the northern region of the Gaza Strip and in 2007 Gen. Muhammed Gharib, the commander of the Fatah Preventative Security Force was killed when a Hamas RPG rocket hit his home. Hamas militants didn’t stop there as they presumed to gun down Gharib’s two young daughters as well as his bodyguards. As most people can see just by turning on the news at night, lately the Middle East, especially the West Bank and Gaza Strip has been a bloodbath with near constant fighting between the IDF and rival Islamist factions. This was all incorporated into Carter’s conference with al-Zahar. Although the two left on good terms, many are doubtful that this will change anything even though the future is never certain. Carter responded to the U.S and Israeli criticism by returning it, questioning why the United States or European Union has never bothered to even attempt a conference with Hamas officials to settle disputes face-to-face. Will Carter’s efforts as peace bear results, or will it be just another hopeless waste of time and words to try and fix a problem that seems unsolvable? Many speculate that there will never be genuine reconciliation in the Middle East between Israel and its enemies, but you can never be certain.
