UK -Politics & World Current Affairs

6 July 2009

When former Prime Minister Tony Blair was giving oral evidence to a House of Common Select Committee last month,  a leading New labour figure was overheard whispering to a colleague ‘ my god, what have we done !’.
Appearing in his current role as the Middle East Peace Quartet (EMEPQ) envoy before the all party Foreign Affairs Select Committee (FASC) Mr Blair articulated his assessment of how to overcome obstacles impeding the peace process towards the two state solution in Palestine, while remaining in a calm control of the two and half hour session.
Blair’s testimony couldn’t have come in worse time for Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who faced the worst week for the ruling (New)Labour in living memory. Seven ministers resigned from the cabinet in four days, including three from among the women ‘ Blair babes’  after 1997 landslide victory, with one minister for Europe Caroline Flint tossing her stiletto into Brown’s political heart with a letter of resignation accusing him of ‘ passive bullying’, and reducing women’s role in the cabinet to a ‘ mere window dressing.’  
As FASC’s summoning of Mr Blair coincided with American President Barak Obama’s long awaited speech to the Islamic world the media, naturally, focused on the hearing, comparing Blair style to that of Brown as the week ended with a humiliating defeat for Labour in local elections as well as in the European Parliament with Labour coming third?? While Labour’s rating in opinion polls was the worst since its 1979 defeat in the hands of Margaret Thatcher.
As Brown was wiping cold sweat off his eyebrows with one hand and trying to shield his back with the other, Blair, the excellent orator who lead Labour from historic obscurity to three election victories, was charming the 11 strong FASC members providing over two dozen journalists, commentators and sketch writers with shovels and diggers to prepare his successor’s political grave. Not only did y Blair reinvent himself a world statesman in command of his own road-map to steer the world’s oldest family feud but he also left ME specialists in little doubt about his suitability to deal with a problem he clearly understood its core in a crucial time. Clouds of gloom covered the region since electing a right wing Israeli collation lead by Bibi Netanyahu – who carries his albatross of falling out with the Democratic administration of former President Bill Clinton. Netanyahu’s first meeting with President Obama reinforced pessimism.
Obama saw Jewish settlements as an obstacle to peace. When Netanyahu briefed journalists that stopping ‘ natural growth’ – a code for expanding existing settlements to accommodate more settlers-  would ‘ stop life in Israel,’ Secretary of State Hilary Clinton spelt it out in no uncertain terms: the president was  not just talking about outposts, which must be dismantled, but he  meant no building  of any kind. She had earlier rejected Netanyahu’s offer to dismantle outposts in exchange of a tougher American policy on Iran’s ambition to develop a nuclear weapons, which many observers, as well as Israelis of course, see as an existentialist threat to the Jewish State.
Blair’s evidence was to complete FASC’s report following its members’ facts finding missions in Israel, and Palestine. They returned mindful of facts  on the ground that impede peace process and of two irreconcilable positions –Hams and like minded extremists on one side and Netanyahu and religiously driven settlers on the other. A point was reinforced by settlers demonstrating against ‘ Hussein Obama’ condemning his Cairo university speech, which was also given the cold shoulder by Hamas and Muslim Brothers as ‘ empty talk with no deeds to back’,  although he was warmly received by mainstream Muslims and Arabs  who ‘ met  Obama with applauds and flowers ’,  as the Financial Times opined, ‘ while President George W Bush was received with a volley of shoes during his last visit to the region.’   
Blair saw an opportunity in Obama created dynamics, as he drew on lessons from Northern Ireland advising all concern to help each party recognising the other’s ‘realities on the ground.’
He carefully chose his neutral words picking a detail from here and an incident from there, dropping a hint by Northern Ireland comparison or from a conversation he had in the region (illustrating his good working relationship with various regional leaders ) enabling those present to draw their own conclusions, while letting his answers fill gaps he deliberately left in order to let the weight of  British MPs’ eye witness account add to his testimony.
Members enquiring about the humiliating delays travelling Palestinians have to daily endure at check points manned by young, inexperienced badly briefed Israeli soldiers, was a case in point as the experience, all agreed, make Palestinians less trusting of Israelis as partners for peace. Expansion of settlements was another as they change the map of the West bank disrupting the geographical continuity of a future Palestinian state. The question was put by Jewish MP Fabien Hamilton, who is also a member of Labour Friends of Israel.
A barrister by trade, Blair underlined MPs’ own observation as evidence presented to a jury. He repeatedly tells the Israelis and the quartet that not only free-movement of people and goods were essential to the viability of  a Palestinian state but also its territorial continuity hence the party who truly believe in the two state solution – which both the UK and the USA are committed to – will have to work to make those two conditions applicable and convince Israel to do so.
He also used the opportunity in answering those two questions (that were repeated by a number of members of the select committee), as a concealed criticism of  incomprehensible Israelis policy of  withholding building permissions from Palestinians to make life difficult. Displaying a map of the west bank he pointed zone ‘D’ of the 1993 Oslo agreement, area bordering Jordan away from the borders between Israel and a future Palestinian state.  ‘It  is hard to understand  how building, developing, or adding extensions to existing building  [on the West Bank – Jordan borders] can threaten the security of Israel,’ said Blair, adding that withholding building permits hinders development and aid projects aimed at improving the economic conditions of the Palestinians. A clear message that if Israelis were serious about achieving the two states they should let the Palestinians build in zone ‘ D’ which is no threat to Israel.
Such ‘realities on the ground’ are seen by Palestinians as Israel’s deliberate  frustration of  their efforts to have a viable state by disrupting its continuity by expanding settlement and by separation wall.
The Israelis see another ‘realities on the ground’ as explained by the same maps: Israel pulled out of Gaza and dismantled all settlements four years ago, said Blair  ‘ but rockets started falling on Israeli southern small towns like Sderot and Ashkelon fired from Gaza by Hamas and its affiliate groups , after they drove President Mahmoud Abbas security forces out of the strip in a bloody coup. This lead Israel’s public opinion to swing the sceptics way asking what would happen if  the west bank was handed to Mr Abbas’s National Authority only for Gaza’s scenario to be repeated  by Hamas and co, either toppling the PNA or placing mortar and rocket launchers along the borders reaching most of Israel’s population centres?
Blair urged all to help make each side see the other’s reality in order resuscitate the peace process.
What made Blair ‘ cautiously optimistic’ is that the majority of Israelis and majority of Palestinians want peace and again, like Northern Ireland (where he worked with US senator Robert Mitchell, hence he welcomes working with him again in Palestine/Israel issue), the majority need help and encouragement to isolate the peace disruptive minorities, like Hamas and co on the Palestinian side and the extremist settlers on Israeli side.
He singled out Egypt for praise with its essential role  bridging negotiation with Hamas – as it is boycotted by all for its refusal to honour agreement signed by the late Yasser Arafat’s PNA- and in enabling the majority to contain the extremists within Gaza.
Arab’s supporters – and leftists still seeking their pound of flesh from Blair who joined President Bush’s ‘adventure’, in Iraq -  condemned Mr Blair’s evidence as  ‘saying nothing of value or doing any thing meaningful’  while right wing Likudists said he unfairly criticised Israel. Condemnations from both side  usually means he presented a clear anatomy of the problem with some hints, that American pressure – to which the Israelis normally do not yield, might help swing  public opinion to replace Netanyahu’s government (as happened in 1999 when the Clinton administration worked to make the Israeli public aware of its displeasure with Nrtanyahu) with a Kadima or Labour lead coalition more serious about peace. The Achilles heel of this theory, which is a challenge to Obama administration, is that a frustrated desperate Netanyahu might try to emulate Menachem Begins 1981 successful strike against the Iraqi Nuclear reactor in Osirak, by taking a pot shot against Iranian nuclear facilities, which would ensure his return with a clear majority. But it surely will have most disastrous consequences in the region and beyond.
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©Copyrights Adel Darwish 2009, not to be copied, reprinted, republished in whole or in part without permission from Adel Darwish