Blair as Peace Envoy Would Be ‘Disaster for Palestinians’
GAZA CITY - It is unlikely that Tony Blair will get a warm welcome in Gaza City or anywhere in the Palestinian territories if he is confirmed as the Quartet’s new Middle East peace envoy.
In recent years, Mr Blair and by association Britain have become perceived as supporters of the US and Israel and antagonists of Arab and Palestinian interests. 
Mohammed Taher, 32, a civil servant, described the appointment of Mr Blair as “a disaster” for Palestinians. “We have been saying for a long time that Blair is nothing more than George Bush’s poodle. We remember his stance on Iraq and Britain’s lead role in imposing an embargo on the Palestinian Authority after we did not vote the correct way,” he said.
“It’s difficult to see how he can be neutral and independent after the positions he has taken. The envoy should be someone who has good relations with both sides not just one side.”
The Gaza Strip is now undergoing its second year of economic embargo. There is enough food but other items such as cigarettes are running out. According to Riad Musa, 29, an officer in a non-governmental organisation, in recent years Britain’s foreign policy has become indistinguishable from that of the US.
However, there was one voice that was more supportive. Itidad, 29, an Arabic language teacher, said that Mr Blair’s experience and profile could force the different parties to reach an agreement.
“I think it’s positive that an envoy is someone of the stature of Tony Blair. He represents a strong country which has played a big historical role in the Middle East.” she said.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007
This is hilarious. I guess it pays to be a poodle. Are these guys for real ? This mutt hasnt done a thing for the middle-east in the last 15 years. Whats he gonna do now ? Being a messenger boy from being an ex-PM to a dying ex-colonial power i suppose is an improvement !!
Send the poodle to Gaza. There are a million angry pit-bulls waiting for him.
Million and a half I think. They are hungry too and haven’t had a smoke in a while it seems.
Blair’s “appointment” means only one thing–absolutely no progress will be made towards a two-state solution. In fact, that is the precise reason Blair was appointed–to stall, spin, and deceive the world into thinking that Israel intends to give back the land it has, and continues to steal; that Israel will end its pre-emptive aggression against its neighbors; that Israel will cease its war crimes, including killing innocent Palestinian children; that Israel will end its backwards system of apartheid; and that Israel will begin to act like a responsible, civilized nation, which, until now, it has not.
If they really wanted an impartial mediator they would have asked Jimmy Carter.
Impartial does not mean giving into everything Israel wants, while taking more away from the Palestinians. How much more land, money, water and olive trees are they expected to give away?
Goose 2, don’t bother to comment. I already know your opinion by heart.
Ha ! Its only a matter of time before Goose2 and his fellow AIPAC members vets et al join in and hijack this thread !!
Notice how not just Palestinians but Lebanese, Iraqi and no doubt other locations of unrest that includes internecine fighting didn’t used to fight among themselves. The Palestinians need one another if they are ever to achieve any kind of sovereignty.
Could we be seeing a Bush/Cheney-engineered chapter in the destabilization that is to precede the birth of The New Middle East? (Of course, it is called helping others achieve “democracy” as we are busy right now “helping” Iran by trying to undermine its government.)
George Bush glommed on to Blair as the person to be appointed our “helper” in Gaza as quickly as he appointed the un-elected Abbas to be The President of All the Palestinians.
Can the world do nothing?
“Impartial does not mean giving into everything Israel wants, while taking more away from the Palestinians. How much more land, money, water and olive trees are they expected to give away?”
If they accept peace soon, then they should get their borders back at the Green Line and Jerusalem should be negotiated somehow, I don’t actually have an answer there. I think both sides have a pretty good claim to it as their capital. Golan demilitarized. If they don’t then complete the wall and forget about any changes. Clock is ticking.
“Goose 2, don’t bother to comment. I already know your opinion by heart.”
[hug] you DO love me Maggie.
Bernice - “Can the world do nothing?”
Looks like they are lining up behind the new peace initiatives towards the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. Taxes have been released, the Quartet is working on initiatives. There has been a new conference with Egypt and Jordan. Another move towards peace is starting.
“Ha ! Its only a matter of time before Goose2 and his fellow AIPAC members vets et al join in and hijack this thread !!”
Well I don’t line up behind AIPAC. Not a member. I simply retain the ability to see right from wrong. An ability that so many of us Progressives seem to have lost in a haze of follow-the-leader hatred of all things touched by America. Just because Israel is an ally of the US doesn’t make it wrong and Progressives need to see that. It is a country like any other and has a right to defend itself and to negotiate with what-ever states it wants to.
Thanks for the update Goose. Now I really feel safe … its that warm fuzzy feeling when you know everything is just gonna be wonderful.
Well, the policies of the israeli govt are wrong in itself and has nothing to do with being an american ally. The fact that israel has americas support to further its oppression against the Palestinians causes a lot of us grief. Also, all things touched by america in terms of foreign policy seems to sour immediately. Maybe this has to do with our own latent urge to colonize and dominate the world for economic gain.
“Maybe this has to do with our own latent urge to colonize and dominate the world for economic gain.”
You mean Americans right? I see Moslems telling other Moslems how to behave, what to wear, how to think and what to do. Ordering authors killed for what they write. Burning churches because of cartoons. I see Moslems not allowing their women to vote or drive and stoning them when they love the wrong person because of his sect or tribe. I see Chinese occupying Tibet. I see Russians fighting Chechens. I see El Salvador fighting Honduras. I see Chile fighting Peru. I see India fighting Pakistan. I see Serbia fighting Bosina and Croatia.
I see “rape-camps” in Bosnia, overlooked by “civilized” Europe in the same century as other Europeans gassed 6 million Jews and probably 6 million other “degenerate” people. I see the great socialist experiment starve 20 million peasants and purge 20 million others. I see peaceful Europe in the 20th Century alone fighting the Italo-Turkish War, the First Balkan War, the Second Balkan War, World War I, the Easter Rising, the Estonian Liberation War, the Polish-Ukrainian War, the War between Republic of Poland and Ukrainian Peoples Republic, the Conflict between Poland and Lithuania, the Czechoslovakia-Hungary War, the Great Poland Uprising, the Polish-Czech war for Teschen Silesia, the Silesian Uprisings, the Russian Civil War, the Polish-Soviet War, the Anglo-Irish War, the Irish Civil War, the Spanish Civil War, World War II, the Winter War, the Uprising in Poznan, the Soviet invasion of Hungary, the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, The Troubles of Northern Ireland,
Bosnian War, and…. the First and Second Kosovo Wars. BTW, I limit myself to peaceful, civilized Europe in the 20th Century alone.
I see Franco, Hitler, Mussolini, Ionescu, Ho Chi Mihn, Pol Pot, Hussein, Salazar, Lenin, Stalin, Kruschev, Brezhnev, Tojo, Mao, Chiang Kai-check, Nassar, Khadaffi, De Gaul, Churchill, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Wilson, Roosevelt and who knows what other dictator invading or interfering with other countries
I see Japanese invade some 15 countries and enslave women to be prostitutes for their army whilst experimenting with bubonic plague on Chinese peasants. Oh, I also see them shooting, beheading and bayonetting 200,000 residents of Nanking because they resisted.
I see Shell Oil keeping the Netherlands in Indonesia longer than they should have been. I see British Petrolium pushing Eden to attack the Suez. I see Michelin protecting its rubber plantations in Vietnam. I see I. G. Farben producing gas to kill people. I see Union Carbide killing thousands in India. I see Mercedes using Jewish slave labor to produce trucks in WWII. I see United Fruit. I see big Pharma. I see Big Tobacco. I see Standard Oil… It never ends. If you go back you see the Hudson Bay Company, The American Fur Company, the East India Company.
You see Judas getting his silver.
You can call America dirty, but you can only do it while covered in your own filth. Sure the world is about business and profit and domination. It always has been. But your lives and the lives of countless others are better for having democracy and the modern world. The alternative is our history and that is only a river of tears and ashes and blood.
Change things sure, but don’t deny your place in the food chain and don’t think that others are any better than we are.
Some people here, not real Progressives, but some of the hangers on, take any opportunity to denegrate anything to do with the US. Well as they say, wake up and smell the 14th century. The rest of the world is worse.
“I think it’s positive that an envoy is someone of the stature of Tony Blair. He represents a strong country which has played a big historical role in the Middle East.”
Two points made in this quote are as far from the truth as one could possibly get.
One :any ’stature’ that Blair has long lain in tatters. The only ’stature’ he has (if it can so be described ) is as ‘lap-dog in chief’ to the American Establishment. But then ,in an upside-down world order this could well ( by quite a stretch of fancy ) be deemed ’stature’.
Two: Britain certainly may be ’strong ‘ .But ,more ominously,it is also the ‘other’ global bully. And in tandem with its senior partner in crime ,it goose-steps the face of the Earth ,shooting up and terrorizing the rest . (In the truest traditions of the Wild West.)
It begs the question though : why is Blair even considering this ,especially when he knows that he carries no credibility with the other side .Unless of course ,he has very willingly agreed to be cat’s paw in a nefarious Western scheme to bring about some kind of Armageddon in the rest of Middle East . (And thus pull Israel’s chestnuts out of the fire.)
His ’services’ ,most definitely, won’t be coming cheap . They’d have to top the millions he could make per pop on Western Lecture Circuit. By a very very wide margin.
Quite a win-win situation for the ‘noble’ Mr.Blair : get your jollies by unleashing mayhem to your heart’s content - and then be paid countless millions for all your pains.
Poodle Blair has definitely been the empires willing and pliant servant and has been jstly rewarded. These guys are delusional. Its the only rational explanation for this. he thinks he can ’save’ the middle east like he ’saved’ Africa !
Oh goose2 … your rant is completely irrelevant. I may be a red-blooded american or jewish or muslim or hindu or pagan and it still doesnt matter. Please do not make excuses for american or israeli or anyones oppressive policies … you sound ridiculous.
i think this is despicable. gyptain is right. these morons are delusional. how can this freak think he can be an envoy for peace after invading iraq. what a load of crap. has he not done enough damage? does he think he can wipe the slate clean by this hypocracy? they make me sick.
they are very disturbed people and it’s scary that they can hold such important positions.
I think even if their intentions are sincere, unfortunately, the majority have lost trust in Mr Blair and Mr Bush and for that reason this promotion does not and will never sit right.
RJKT: “It begs the question though : why is Blair even considering this ,especially when he knows that he carries no credibility with the other side”
I too have pondered this question.
Blair is a man who thinks of himself a ‘good Christian’ (some newspapers are also speculating his imminent conversion to Catholisism) and ‘wanting to make a difference in the world.’
Blair, on numerous occasions, has asserted that ‘history will be the judge.’ This man, as noted by other commentators, takes more heed of the future than of the present and past when making decisions of weight.
I think Blair knows history will judge his Middle-Eastern choices as immoral, unjust and unchristian. Him being a self-confessed man of piety and of passionate conviction, is probably looking for a chance to redeem his tarnished legacy, to balance the cock-up of Iraq with the forging of a lasting peace in Gaza. He would then be able to respond to critisms that two successes out of three policies isn’t a bad record (N.Ireland, Iraq/Afghan., Palestine).
Either that, or he’s at a loose end, needs the salary while helping see GW’s project to it’s conclusion.
The two Bs - Blair and Bush - are war criminals and deserve the same finish as Saddam.
Blair as peace envoy - what a joke!
Samski:” being a self-confessed man of piety and of passionate conviction, he is probably looking for a chance to redeem his tarnished legacy.”
Couldn’t agree with you ,more. But it would take far ,far more than a kindly fairy godmother to grant him this particular wish .
About the ‘Good Christian ‘ bit: strange isn’t it that ,down the ages ,the world has suffered the most at the hands of ‘the Good Christians ‘ and their “Good Christian ‘ leaders .
At any rate ,I’d have thought that the last thing a ‘good Christian’ would do was bruit his Christianity about ,for all the world to see. (He (or she) would not be wearing it on his (or her) sleeve .But have it engraved deep within ,where it matters the most-on the heart .)
I’m sorry to say this - but given the track record of Blair , Bush and Cheney -there’s far more to this than meets the eye. It’s not a simple , straightforward case of Blair making that desperate , all-or-nothing grab at this brass-ring of personal redemption.
That’s right, send in one of the guys who was responsible for the current disaster in the Middle East (Iraq) as a “peace envoy” . And the band plays on…such a master stroke.
if ‘Chemical Ali’ can get served frontier justice why not this axis of evil … Cheney-Bush-Blair ?
Wishful thinking !!
Are they serious? Sending a warmongering imperialist to the middle-east?! One who supported Monkey Boy in attacking Iraq. No wonder the world is in such a mess with idiots like these in charge.
The Chimp doesn’t look like he’s having much fun in the picture above. He looks constipated.