Will Tony Blair rule over Gaza?

Declassified UK, 2 Oct 25, John McEvoy

This week, US president Donald Trump unveiled his 20-point “comprehensive plan to end the Gaza conflict”.

The plan aims, in effect, to help Israel to achieve diplomatically what it has failed to achieve militarily: the neutering of armed resistance, the dismembering of Hamas, and the removal of political agency from Palestinians in Gaza.

The first point notes that “Gaza will be a deradicalized terror-free zone that does not pose a threat to its neighbors”, and it later says that “all military, terror, and offensive infrastructure” in the strip “will be destroyed and not rebuilt”.

The document also implicitly acknowledges that the Israeli government has been collectively punishing the Palestinian population by refusing to allow aid into the besieged enclave.

“Upon acceptance of this agreement, full aid will be immediately sent into the Gaza strip”, says point seven. “Entry and distribution of aid in the Gaza strip will proceed without interference”.

But perhaps most remarkably, Trump’s so-called peace plan includes a proposal for Gaza to be “governed under the temporary transitional governance of a technocratic, apolitical Palestinian committee”.

This committee would be “made up of qualified Palestinians and international experts, with oversight and supervision by a new international transitional body” chaired by Trump alongside former UK prime minister Tony Blair.

Blair’s credentials for promoting peace in the Middle East are far from impeccable.

After sponsoring the illegal war on Iraq in 2003 – which ignited violence and extremism across the region – Blair worked for the Quartet on the Middle East, an unsuccessful attempt at mediating the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

The former prime minister has also been historically sympathetic to Israel’s interests.

“I have never actually found it hard to be a friend of Israel, I am proud to be a friend of Israel”, Blair told a Labour Friends of Israel reception in September 2006.More concerningly, Blair is now closely linked to pro-Israel businessmen.

Larry Ellison, a US tycoon who has donated millions to the Israel Defence Forces, is one of the key funders of the Tony Blair Institute, having pledged around $500m over recent years.

None of this appears to worry Keir Starmer, who came out in support of Trump’s plan, saying it “is profoundly welcome and I am grateful for President Trump’s leadership”.

Trump says Hamas has “three or four days” to respond to the proposal, saying the group will “pay in hell” if it rejects the deal.

But Hamas looks unlikely to accept it. A senior official told the BBC that the group will reject the plan, claiming it “serves Israel’s interests and ignores those of the Palestinian people”.

Blair’s campaign to profit from the rubble of Gaza, then, is far from a done deal.