But He's Hopeful That He Can Talk Them Out Of It.

Carter Says Hamas May Accept Right of Israel to Exist (Alisa Odenheimer, Bloomberg, 4/21/08)

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, who helped broker peace between Egypt and Israel in 1978, said that Israel's enemy Hamas may accept, under certain circumstances, the Jewish state's right to exist.

Hamas leaders told Carter that the group would accept a peace agreement negotiated by the leader of the rival Fatah group, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, on condition that the agreement is submitted to the Palestinian people for approval, the former president said in a speech in Jerusalem.

"Hamas leaders said they would accept a Palestinian state on the 1967 border and the right of Israel to live as a neighbor, provided the agreement was submitted to the Palestinian people for overall approval," Carter said.

The odd thing about the Israeli-Palestinian dispute is that everyone knows what the peace would look like, it's just that no one wants it. Because of that, the standard negotiator's tactic of getting people to dicker over the small questions until they get so emotionally invested in the process that they compromise the big questions, won't work.