Just when you thought prospects for the future of the Gaza Strip could not get any bleaker, United States President Donald Trump has unveiled his 20-point “peace plan” for the Palestinian territory, starring himself as the chair of a “Board of Peace” that will serve as a transitional government in the enclave. This from the man who has been actively aiding and abetting Israel’s genocide of Palestinians since January, when he took over the US presidency from former honorary genocidaire Joe Biden.
But that is not all. Also on board for the “Board of Peace” is former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who will reportedly play a significant governing role in Gaza’s proposed makeover. To be sure, importing a Sir Tony Blair from the United Kingdom to oversee an enclave of Palestinians smacks rather hard of colonialism in a region that is already quite familiar with the phenomenon.
And yet the region is also already quite familiar with Blair himself, owing in particular to his notorious performance during the 2003 war on Iraq, led by his buddy and then-chief of the so-called war on terror, George W Bush. Swearing by the false allegations of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, Blair steered the UK into a war that ultimately killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, earning him a most deserved reputation as a war criminal.
In other words, he is not a guy who should under any circumstances turn up on a “Board of Peace”.
And while Bush would subsequently retire to a quiet life of painting dogs and portraits of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Blair continued to make a name for himself as the man the Middle East just cannot get rid of – and to make a pretty penny while at it.
After resigning as prime minister in 2007, Blair was immediately reincarnated as Middle East envoy for the “Quartet” of international powers – representing the US, the European Union, Russia, and the United Nations – that is ostensibly forever striving to resolve the Israel-Palestine issue.
But in this case, too, the appointment of an envoy with close relations to Israel – the unquestionable aggressor to the “conflict” – pretty much obviated any advancement in the direction of “peace”.
Furthermore, Blair’s diplomatic activity conveniently overlapped with an array of highly lucrative business dealings in the region, from providing paid advice to Arab governments to signing on as a part-time senior adviser in 2008 with the US investment bank JP Morgan. For the latter post, Blair was said to be compensated in excess of $1m per year.
As Francis Beckett, coauthor of Blair Inc: The Man Behind the Mask, told media in 2016 – the year after Blair stepped down as Quartet envoy – “the difficulty was that when he went to meetings in the Middle East, nobody knew which Tony Blair they were seeing – whether it was Tony Blair the Quartet envoy or Tony Blair the patron of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation or Tony Blair the principal of the consultancy firm Tony Blair Associates”.
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