Des Passerelles

Jimmy Carter met with an official of Hamas. Nicolas Sarkozy said he would not presume to judge what others did, that des passerelles might someday prove useful. A retired French diplomat, it has now been revealed, has also met with officials of Hamas. So it seems that passerelles are being constructed right and left, perhaps even faster than George Bush can blow them up, as he attempted to do with his speech to the Israeli Knesset the other day. If countenancing talks with Hamas, even from a considerable distance (and Sarkozy has been especially careful to maintain his distance), becomes the contemporary equivalent of "soft on Communism," which seems to be Bush's notion of how the idea should be handled in the context of an American political campaign, the likelihood of progress will be even smaller than it has been. But the importance of these developments should not be underestimated. They indicate that the old game has ended in a stalemate with which no one can be happy, as Judah Grunstein notes. We await the official American reaction to the Figaro report. I expect it will be mild. The firewalls have been carefully enough constructed that Bush (and McCain) can go on fulminating about "negotiating with terrorists" while the diplomatic pawns continue to advance. The state of play will not change materially until after the American elections. But whichever side wins, the need to know what might and might not be possible remains.