A Daily Analysis
By Marc Schulman

April 28, 2008 Deaths in Gaza, Carter Back Causing Trouble

Today's deaths in Gaza underscore how events can overtake plans. It seems that the family killed in Beit Hanoun was killed by explosives that went off when militants were targeted by a drone. The amount of damage caused to the house could not have been caused by the weapons that were fired directly by the drone. In some ways it does not matter since the photos that Hamas was happy to share with the world were no less gruesome with or without this explanation. Hamas has responded with Qassam and mortar fire. Expectations are that Hamas will limit its response, since it does not want to endanger the possible ceasefire that it is seeking.

President Carter is back from the Middle East and is making more trouble. Today he wrote an op-ed piece in the New York Times, called Pariah Diplomacy. In it he calls for negotiations with Hamas. He also makes the claim that Hamas would be willing to accept Israel and any peace agreement that was approved by a referendum, one of our readers sent me a link to the article early this morning and for the first time I was motivated to post the following on the NY Times web site:

I am sure President Carter would have done very well negotiating with Hitler at Munich. He would have come back praising him as a man of peace. The basic fallacy in the former Presidentís position is he believes what people tell him, which is what he wants to hear. Actions in international affairs, especially in the Middle East, speak much more loudly than words. Hitler came to power by popular elections just as Hamas did, and then went about seizing those levers of power he did not receive by the electorate, by staging the Reichstag fire, much in the same way Hamas became the sole ruler of Gaza by staging a revolt against the Palestinian Authority.

Finally President Carter forgets the fact that there is law against what he is doing. It is called the Logan Act. Its over 200 years old and prohibits private citizens from engaging in negotiations with foreign governments. Maybe he should follow the law.