Carter says Hamas would accept Israel

JERUSALEM — The armed Islamist movement Hamas is prepared to accept Israel as a neighbor if the Palestinian people approve the terms for peace, former President Carter and the group's exiled leadership said Monday after a visit to the region that included seven hours of negotiations.

Carter said he secured that agreement even as Hamas rejected his proposal for a unilateral, monthlong cease-fire.

Hamas, which has vowed to destroy Israel, also declined to meet with an Israeli deputy prime minister interested in discussing the fate of a captured Israeli soldier.

But Carter, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, said his trip had shown the value of negotiating with Hamas leaders, something Israel and the United States have refused to do.

Israeli officials reacted with scorn to Carter's meetings and the agreement, saying they amounted to a propaganda coup for the Islamist group with no progress to show for it.

The group has made similar declarations in the past, the Israeli officials said, and has no intention of honoring them.

"It was sad to see how Hamas is using former President Carter to try to get legitimization it does not deserve," said Foreign Ministry spokesman Arye Mekel.

Israel's top leaders all avoided Carter during his visit, and U.S. officials criticized him for meeting with people that Washington and Israel have formally designated as terrorists.

Carter said the group's "ultimate goal is to see Israel living in their allocated borders, the 1967 borders, and a contiguous, vital Palestinian state alongside."

Carter was referring to the borders Israel had before the 1967 Middle East war, when it captured Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights. In 1982, Israel completed a pullout from the Sinai Peninsula, another conquest of that war.

Hamas' 1988 charter calls for the destruction of Israel, and its officials have repeated that stand in the years since. The charter also encourages the killing of Jews.

But Carter said that in his negotiations, Hamas leaders referred to the charter dismissively as "an ancient document" and that they agreed to abide by any peace deal forged by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas if the Palestinian people approve it.

That could be accomplished either through a referendum or by a vote of the legislative council.

But Hamas officials have said that any referendum must include Palestinians living in exile worldwide, which could make the vote logistically impossible.

Exiled Hamas leader Khaled Meshal, who met with Carter in Damascus, Syria, told reporters there Monday that the group would not formally recognize Israel even if it accepts a peace deal that implicitly acknowledges Israel's existence.

"We accept a state on the June 4 line with Jerusalem as capital, real sovereignty and full right of return for refugees but without recognizing Israel," Meshal told reporters, referring to the borders before the 1967 war, according to the Reuters news agency.

Meshal is known as one of the most militant members of the group's leadership.

At present, Gaza is the focus of Israeli-Palestinian fighting. Hamas and allied groups have been launching rockets from Gaza into southern Israel. The group has also staged attacks against Israeli soldiers stationed along the border.

Israel conducts frequent raids inside Gaza and has imposed a tight economic blockade.

Hamas, which won 2006 Palestinian elections, has a factionalized leadership split among people living in Gaza and the West Bank, in exile and in Israeli prisons.

While some Hamas leaders advocate an uncompromising line against Israel, others have been more willing to bargain, resulting in contradictory signals from the group about its intentions.