Fox News is reporting that former president Jimmy Carter will meet with Khaled Meshal, the leader of Hamas, later this month. Hamas has been designated by the U.S. government as a “foreign terrorist organization.” It is committed to Islamic fundamentalism, destroying Israel, and, according to the Council on Foreign Relations, “is believed to have killed more than five hundred people in more than 350 separate terrorist attacks since 1993.” Joseph Abrams reports:
Meshal, who lives in Syria to avoid being arrested by the Israeli government, leads Hamas from his seat in Damascus, where he is a guest of Bashar al-Assad’s regime. The State Department has designated Hamas a “foreign terrorist organization,” and some groups hold Meshal personally responsible for ordering the kidnapping of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack once said of the prospect of meeting with Meshal, “That’s not something that we could possibly conceive of.”… Carter would be the first Western leader of his stature to meet with the Hamas chief. Though Meshal met with Clinton officials in the 1990s, the Bush administration has sought to isolate Hamas, enforcing rigid sanctions on its government in Gaza and refusing to meet with its leaders unless it recognizes Israel and abandons terror.
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