Last week’s much-derided attempt by Jimmy Carter to stir some substance into the Middle East peace process has resulted in a tasty morsel rising: HAMAS has announced it will offer a 10-year truce to Israel if Israel withdraws from the lands it seized in 1967.

Is this a cure-all? Not by a long shot. Is it something new? No again - HAMAS has been repeatedly offering versions of this land-for-peace swap. The reason why this is significant is that it brings up the possibility of peace talks with HAMAS, defying a public perception that they’re fringe zealots hellbent on the destruction of Israel and the Jewish people. They may be zealots, but they are not fringe, nor are they adamant against a peace process. They depend on it, and it on them.

HAMAS rose to power among the Palestinians more because of its public works than its extremism. Palestinians who wanted feisty, anti-Semitic, fight-to-the-end rhetoric could look to the PLO’s “Al Aqsa Brigade” or to HAMAS; their loathsome hate speech isn’t what distinguished these groups. The distinction has become that one gets nothing done, is corrupt, cannot control its militias and sucks up to the US and Israel, and the other is HAMAS.

This isn’t just to point out why Palestinians are trending toward HAMAS, and thereby explain their dogged support for it even during this agonizing siege. It is also to explain why HAMAS matters to the peace process, contrary to Secretary Rice’s efforts to turn her nose up and sniff at them.

HAMAS can get things done. It’s seen as having integrity, it can actually enforce a truce that it declares and it has a functional alternative public infrastructure going in the Gaza streets - the kind of soup-kitchen and free-clinic set-up that helped them rise. To ignore them is to only prolong the process as is - which could be the wisest course for IDF strategy anyway, if not in the long-term for Israel and the Palestinians - by ignoring the only player with enough “street cred” to cut a deal with.

In short, HAMAS is a flock of scary dudes, but they have graduated from the level of a local gang, they’re the only player with integrity, and so they have to be worked with. Relying on the PLO just pours aid money into Abbas’ pocket indefinitely, and nobody really trusts them to keep their side of any bargain, anyway.

With Carter putting HAMAS back at the headlines, at further expense to his reputation and in defiance of the indolent and out-of-touch US State Department, we can see that the peace process can be budged. And we’re reminded who peace deals are really struck between: Between enemies.