Is Jimmy Carter a peacemaker... or a rogue diplomat?

The Associated Press

Former President Jimmy Carter, with Palestinian officials, visited Yasser Arafat's tomb in Ramallah on April 15.

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Is Jimmy Carter a peacemaker... or a rogue diplomat?

Former President Jimmy Carter has made a post-White House career of traveling the world, visiting foreign leaders -- especially adversaries of the United States -- and extending the olive branch of peace. But Carter often makes these trips in defiance of current U.S. policy. Not surprisingly, the ex-president's trip to the Palestinian territories this week to meet with leaders of Hamas has generated tremendous controversy here in the United States and in Israel.

President Carter, who has criticized Israel's policy on Palestine, met an ex-minister in Hamas' government on Tuesday. Naser al-Shaer, who served as deputy prime minister in the Hamas-led government that the United States and other Western powers boycotted, was greeted by Carter with a hug and kisses to both cheeks, a member of Carter's delegation said. The United States does not recognize Hamas as legitimate and still lists the group as a terrorist organization.

Is Jimmy Carter overstepping his bounds as a former president? Is he doing freelance diplomacy, in conflict with current U.S. policy and against U.S. interests, and possibly in violation of the law? Or is he simply acting as a private citizen, using his celebrity to make headway with a group that would otherwise be hostile to the United States?

Ben likes: Carter and the Logan Act

James Kirchick/Commentary

Perhaps it is in light of the Logan Act that White House Press Secretary Dana Perino emphasized, “The president believes that if president Carter wants to go, that he is doing so in his own private capacity, as a private citizen, he is not representing the United States.” It is all well and good for the White House to distance itself from the behavior of Jimmy Carter, but there is a limit to how far any American government can go in condemning the actions of a former president.

The station of ex-president carries a diplomatic heft, and no one has used it with more inelegance and opportunism than Jimmy Carter, whose sabotage of American foreign policy has not been limited to Republican presidents (see Bill Clinton and North Korea). By calling on the United States to include Hamas in peace talks, and by meeting with the leader of said terrorist group in the capital of a country with which the United States does not even maintain diplomatic relations, Carter undermines a crucial plank in America’s Middle East policy.

Joel likes: Carter and Hamas

Gerom Gorshenberg/The American Prospect

The current administration’s policy toward Hamas has boomeranged. The U.S.-supported Hamas participation in Palestinian elections, expecting a festival of democracy and Hamas’s defeat. When Hamas won, the administration’s tactics helped produce the Hamas takeover of Gaza. Bush’s “pro-Israel” stance toward Hamas has hurt Israel repeatedly. Meanwhile, Khaled Meshaal, the Damascus-based head of Hamas’s Political Bureau, has just reiterated his willingness to accept a two-state solution.

The U.S. needs a new policy toward Hamas. It has good reasons for avoiding official meetings with Hamas leaders -- which is all the more reason it needs an unofficial back channel, through which it can check how far the Islamic movement will bend in return for a chance to escape the current dangerous stalemate and get back into a Palestinian unity government. Carter’s visit provides a chance for that.