My latest IPS news analysis on this topic is here, and also archived here.

It includes the mini-scoop that yesterday, just one day after returning to the US from his grueling two-week tour around the Middle East, the 84-year-old former President from Plains met with senior administration officials here in Washington DC. (Update: The senior officials he met with included Sen. George Mitchell, as is spelled out in the updated version of the IPS story.)

In the piece, I also note that that meeting,

underlined the change in Carter's relevance and status in the Obama era. The visits he made to the Middle East while George W. Bush was president were barely tolerated by the administration, which kept him at arm's length.

On a related note, I can't believe that on Tuesday, Laura Rozen blogged a post under the title "Obama's Jimmy Carter problem".

She is being seriously under-informed by the people she talks to, if she thinks that is how people in the current administration view Carter.

She quotes one of the many anonymous sources that she likes to rely on-- described only as "a Washington Middle East hand"-- as saying:

Just like with President Clinton, Carter is becoming a huge problem and a growing concern for Obama... They are very pissed with him.

Later in the piece she quotes by name Aaron David Miller, whom she describes as a "veteran U.S. Middle East peace negotiator." He might, of course, be the same person as the "Washington Middle East hand."

But why should she quote Miller on anything to do with Arab-Israeli affairs, in light of his role at the heart of the Dennis Ross-led peace-processing effort that spectacularly failed over the course of 12 years to bring anything resembling peace to the Palestinians, Syrians, Lebanese, and Israelis?

Pretending to know something about what Carter has been working on as well as about Palestinian politics (!) Miller is reported, by name, as superciliously noting that if Carter is working toward opening up an eventual dialogue between Obama and Hamas:

that's a key to an empty room right now given everything that Obama is trying to do with [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin ] Netanyahu and [Palestinian President Mahmoud] Abbas... In fact, the way to lose both of them and much of Congress to boot would be to do precisely what the former president recommends.

Memo to Laura and Aaron: don't you feel a little silly shooting your mouths off about matters that you seem to know little about?

Also, to inform yourselves a bit more about Palestinian politics, you could try reading this recent Just World News post, and some of the expert sources I linked to there.

Bad-mouthing Jimmy Carter is a "sport" that, sadly, has a long history in Washington DC. It was definitely participated in by most leading figures of the Clinton administration, as well as by George W. Bush's people.

So now that Carter is indeed getting access to senior figures in the Obama administration-- and his ideas are gaining a respectful and engaged hearing there-- some of those same tired retreads from the Clinton years (like Aaron Miller) are at it again.

But luckily not, it appears, the only member of the Clinton family who has any real pull these days.

Another good quick resource on the latest Carter trip to the Middle East is this CSM report, Tuesday, by Erin Cunningham. She was one of the small number of reporters who picked up on the fact of his visit with Israeli settler leader Shaul Goldstein.

Finally, what Carter has been trying to deal with for more than three years now-- ever since, in fact, those January 2006 Palestinian parliamentary elections that he monitored and that, lest we forget, Hamas roundly won-- is really the next big issue for people in the peace-and-justice community to come to terms with... That is, the phenomenon that Nathan Brown calls "the green elephant in the room": namely, Hamas.

In Northern Ireland, George Mitchell was successful in persuading the British government, and most of the British people, that they needed to bring the IRA into the peacemaking if it was ever to succeed.

For many British people, that was not easy to stomach, I assure you. I remember going back to visit my family in England in those years in the 1980s when there were regularly IRA bombs on the London Tube... and even that nearly successful attempt against the life of PM Thatcher, in Brighton.

But by quiet diplomacy, Mitchell succeeded in bringing all the relevant parties, including the British government, the "Loyalists" and Sinn Fein, aboard his process there. And now, the number of British people who regret having brought the IRA/Sinn Fein into the process is extremely small indeed.

We peace and justice activists in the US need to learn a little humility. We need to listen to the Palestinian people-- to all of them, not just the ones who may happen to "look like us" or share our lifestyles.

Large numbers of Palestinians support Hamas; and that support is pretty deep, as well as wide. Just like large numbers of Israelis support their religious parties. Hamas has already proven its popular support at the voting booth.

(And then, lest we forget, our government responded by turning round and helping Israel to smash Hamas and all the Palestinians of Gaza very hard in the teeth. Go, democracy, eh? Our government has a lot to apologize for on this count... )

One way to start to rectify matters now is to find a good, forward-looking way to deal Hamas into the peacemaking diplomacy. Both because it's the right thing to do, and because the diplomacy certainly won't get anywhere without Hamas. (Go back and check my earlier JWN post about the parlous state of Fateh, if you doubt that.)

Like dealing with the IRA or back in the day the ANC or any other liberation movement: It seems hard, but in large part that's because of the lengthy campaign of demonization our government(s) and MSM have engaged in for many long years now.

... So let's give Jimmy Carter and his suggestions a fair and supportive hearing. And let's have a lot less of this know-nothing bad-mouthing behind closed doors that passes for "Middle East expertise" in too much of Washington.

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Read 'Just World News' with Helena Cobban here.