Tony Blair and the Middle East

Tony Blair and the Middle East (26 July 07)

Tony Blair: The Quartet's "Peace Envoy" – Discredited, Deluded, Disgraced (Felicity Arbuthnot, July 10, 2007)

Tony Blair and the Middle East

This week the former Prime Minister, Tony Blair, embarked on a two-day tour of the Middle East in his new role special envoy to the so-called Quartet, which comprises the United States, the European Union, the UN and Russia. The Quartet has assumed the role of intervening in the region and in particular interfering with regard to the right to statehood of the Palestinian people. The Quartet’s "Roadmap", introduced in 2002, has established a plan to eventually create a Palestinian state alongside the state of Israel. The Quartet has stated that its objective is to promote an end to what it refers to as the "conflict" in the region. More specifically, it is to "help Palestinians as they build the institutions and economy of a viable state in Gaza and the West Bank, able to take its place as a peaceful and prosperous partner to Israel and its other neighbours".

Blair has been appointed as the Quartet’s representative, therefore, allegedly to "help create viable and lasting government institutions representing all Palestinians, a robust economy, and a climate of law and order for the Palestinian people". In other words, to continue to interfere in the internal affairs of the Palestinian people, to create and exacerbate divisions and to make sure that any future Palestinian state does not threaten the interests of the Israeli Zionists and is subservient to and dependent on the Britain, the US and the other big powers. Indeed, representatives of the US made it clear before the present trip that their new representative will have no contact with Hamas, the majority party in the last elections to the Palestinian Authority, which subsequently formed a government of national unity, because this organisation does not accept the dictate of the big powers and is prepared to militantly resist US-Israeli aggression and sabotage in order to defend the rights of the Palestinian people. For this reason it is labelled a "terrorist" organisation by Britain and the US, who are intent on maintaining their dominant position in the region. Russia and some European countries have adopted a different position in regard to Hamas and are attempting to advance their own interests in the region, for example by advocating an international force to police the Palestinian territories.

During the visit, Blair visited Israel, Jordan and the West Bank and met both Israeli leaders and President Mahmoud Abbas and other representatives of the Palestinian Authority. It was noticeable that Blair was widely praised by the government of Israel, whilst representatives of the Palestinian Authority reportedly told him that unless he addressed the issue of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory he would make little headway. The former Hamas Prime Minister, Ismail Haniya, stated that Blair should take the opportunity to "correct the mistakes he made as Britain's prime minister". He added, "We are ready for dialogue with Blair, and even the Quartet. All we want is justice for the Palestinian people." Other Palestinian representatives expressed the view that Blair would lose all credibility if he failed to talk with Hamas, which has won the support of the majority of Palestinians, noting that he was already seen as the main ally of US imperialism in the region.

The government is of course fully behind Blair’s new post in the Middle East, which clearly builds on the role that Britain played whilst he was Prime Minister. Every attempt has been made to make the Palestinian Authority dependent on the big powers, and Britain and the US in particular. Everything is done to present the British government and its former prime minister as the best friend of the Palestinian people and an "honest broker’ in the Middle East. But history tells a different story. It was successive British governments before 1948 which created modern Israel and deprived the Palestinian people of their land, sovereignty and rights, and it has been British governments since that time which have supported and armed the Israeli Zionists and continued to deny the Palestinian people their rights. Britain and the US, as well as the other big powers have used Israel as a means to create instability throughout the region and to ensure that they are provided with the justification to continue intervention throughout the Middle East.

Faced with the heroic struggle of the Palestinian people for their rights, Britain and the US in particular are now attempting to create a Palestinian Authority which is to their liking and under their influence and yet again are ignoring the rights and wishes of the Palestinian people. The attitude of the British and US governments and their representative, Tony Blair, towards Hamas shows that all their talk about "exporting democracy" and so-called "universal values" is simply a means of imposing their domination over others. There can be no illusions about the "good offices" of Blair or other representatives of the other big powers. What must be demanded is an end to big power interference throughout the Middle East and justice for the Palestinian people. (26 July 07)

Tony Blair: The Quartet's "Peace Envoy" – Discredited, Deluded, Disgraced

Felicity Arbuthnot, Global Research, July 10, 2007

Poor George Orwell, if only he had hung on another 70 years or so. What he could have added to his "war is peace". What he could have done with "warmonger is peacemaker". What would he have done with Blair, the first Prime Minister in history to be questioned – three times – by Scotland Yard (the last time just days before he left office) in a criminal investigation – regarding allegations that generous donors to his party were rewarded with peerages – being chosen by the UN, US, EU, and Russia as Middle East Peace Envoy.

An "honest broker"?

But "cash for honours" pales against this vain, delinquent politician joining the wholesale slaughter in Muslim countries, which posed no threat to the US or UK, based on the mother of all lies, seemingly cooked up in Number 10 Downing Street, the residence of the Prime Minister of "the mother of parliaments". The man who enjoined his country in George W Bush's "crusade", who after the recent failed bombings in London and Glasgow, called British Muslims "absurd", nurturing a "false sense of grievance" that they are being oppressed by Britain and the United States, according the Guardian. Given the abattoirs that Afghanistan and Iraq have become at US and UK hands, or under their watch, ditto the Balkans in 1999 (by some sleight of hand declared legal, as Afghanistan, more for Orwell) with more Afghans being killed by allied US troops than "insurgents", resistance, Taliban – plus the charnel house Mesopotamia has become, having lost certainly a minimum of two and a half million in excess deaths between the 13-year embargo and the four-plus-year occupation, with four million fled or internally displaced. If the recent London/Glasgow incidents were what we are led to believe and not some "black" operation closer to Whitehall (it is hard to trust official assertions ever again), grievance in the Muslim community would hardly be unreasonable. "These are people who are prepared to bomb innocent men, women and children, families in their homes or going about their business," trumpet officials, complicit in doing just that, on near unimaginable scale.

Further, as Stephen Lendman writes in his excellent "Reinventing a war criminal": "He joined in cutting off essential aid to the Palestinian people and renounced its democratically elected Hamas government without ever giving it a chance to prove itself. He also supported Israel's aggressive war against Lebanon, Gaza and the West Bank, and, in short, partnered in backing war and avoiding peace. He now has a new title in his new job. His mission is the same. He'll bring no peace to the Middle East nor does he intend to."

Arms from the US have been flowing in to Israel, with Britain's backing, to kill Palestinians at crossings, children going to school, families picnicking on beaches. Heavy machinery has demolished family homes, trashed municipal offices, villages, so foreign settlers or multinational businesses can "legally" steal and build on ancient land, the heritage of families, handed down over generations; machinery which destroys their farms, citrus and olive groves. Where has been "peace envoy" Blair's unequivocal condemnation? Where has been even a bleat of protest? Did he read recent reports of a village where Bedouin have lived for sixty years, where Israeli forces were in such a hurry to demolish for more settlers, they allegedly even dragged babies out of homes, still in their playpens?

"A true friend of the State of Israel," said Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of his outgoing British counterpart Tony Blair. "Tony Blair is a very well-appreciated figure in Israel," said Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni. According to an Israeli government statement, Israel "will provide [him] with all necessary assistance in order for him to carry out his duties", writes Arjan El Fassad (Electronic Intifada). You bet. Moreover: "In his speech at the Annual Reception of Labour Friends of Israel in September 2006, Blair said: ‘I have never actually found it hard to be a friend of Israel, I am proud to be a friend of Israel.’" No doubt his role to "advise" on "institutional reform" in Palestine will provide him with a front row seat at the sort of "reform" he has been party to in his invasions – destruction of life, limb and that left of Palestine's civil society.

He should be quite at home in another invading, occupying country, which has also divided Palestine as he and Bush planned to divide Iraq – and where, like Iraq, communities are walled off from each other by the policies of "democracy". The Messianic Blair, having bought lock, stock and barrel in to the neo-cons "crusade", "clash of civilisations", has never openly backed off from some seriously disturbing bedfellows.

In John Gray's newly published "Black Mass", he refers to the apocalyptic influence in the American Christian right, reminding again of another not too well bolted down on all four corners, Admiral William Boykin, who declared that the enemy in the "war on terror" was "a guy called Satan". Gray's analysis of Blair's grasp on history does not bode well for Palestine and the region (as if they do not have enough problems) " ...he was led into the Iraq debacle by the belief that history was on his side. Actually he knew very little history and what he did know he refused to accept when it undercut his hopes." Further, Blair is " ... an American neo-conservative and has been all his life and with Bush has embraced a 'missionary style of politics’." Hardly the man to bring peace, light and hope in the hearts of those in one of the most hurting, complex regions on earth, even without the smouldering ruins of Iraq and Lebanon as baggage and the blood for ever ingrained on his hands.

Blair has "signally failed in everything he ever tried to do in the Middle East" writes Robert Fisk, of Blair's appointment, remarking that when he heard of it, he checked the calendar to ensure it was not April Fool's Day. He refers to Blair's "blend of ruthlessness and dishonesty ... slippery use of language" and compares him to another man who thought he could be a peace envoy in the Middle East, former SS officer, Kurt Waldheim, who also could not believe he had ever done anything wrong. A correspondent to the Independent letters page wrote simply: "Is that ‘peace envoy’ as in ‘Atilla the Peace Envoy’?" Abdel Bari Atwan, Editor in Chief of Al Quds Al Arabi, referred to Blair as: " the most hated man in the Middle East after Bush." "He does not have a good background and a good reputation in the region," Hamas Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini told Reuters (July 1). In the Sunday Herald, political Editor Jim Cusick wrote: " ... he will not be a helpful figure in solving the region's strife because he comes with too much baggage that mirrors the political positions of both the US and Israeli governments."

Carsten Kuhntopp, ARD Middle East Correspondent in Amman, reminds that former Middle East Envoy to the Middle East, Alvaro de Soto, in his final Report, described how American diplomats had threatened to cut US subsidy to the UN if it, in the form of the Quartet did not follow US demands. De Soto described how the US "pushed for an armed confrontation between (democratically elected) Hamas and Fatah". One US "diplomat" said: "I like this violence ... it means Palestinians are resisting Hamas." He concluded that with the US as Israel's closest ally, there is no one to plead the Palestinian cause. Kuhntopp ends: "Tony Blair as Middle East envoy – truly putting the fox in charge of the henhouse. But given the Quartet's disastrous policies, it somehow fits." Blair's standing in Britain itself was reflected by the left wing Morning Star and the right wing Daily Mail again agreeing, with the former commenting on his resignation: "Good riddance" and the latter "The day Blair became an irrelevance".

Another commentator remarked on Britain's final plunge in to ignominy and irrelevance under Blair: "From bulldog to lapdog". A US Administration official, however, referred to Blair's "star quality" (perhaps he was speaking from a psychiatric ward).

Blair reportedly also has plans to establish a faith foundation to promote understanding between Islam and Christianity ("you couldn't make it up" country, again) and it seems, plans to become a Roman Catholic. Perhaps they "are short of serial killers in their congregation", pondered Craig Murray, former UK Ambassador to Uzbekistan. Murray repeatedly sent extensive memos and flew back to London to inform the government, via the Foreign Office, that the