Blair unfit for peace-making:

Blair unfit for peace-making

By Khalid Amayreh in East Jerusalem

There is no doubt that Tony Blair, who has just been appointed by the Quartet (US, EU, Russia and UN) as Peace Envoy to the Middle East is utterly unfit for the job. The man is simply too deceitful and too dishonest and too unethical to be a genuine peacemaker.

Last week, renowned British Journalist Robert Fisk wrote the following about Blair:

“I remain overwhelmed that this vain, deceitful man, this proven liar, a trumped-up lawyer who has the blood of thousands of Arab men, women and children on his hands is really contemplating being ‘our’ Middle East envoy.”

Fisk simply told the truth about the former British Prime Minister, now entrusted with the formidable and nearly impossible task of getting Israel to end its 40-year-old Nazi-like occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza Strip and allow the Palestinians to have a viable state that would live in peace beside Israel.

Blair’s legacy as British Prime Minister and world leader is undoubtedly dark and ugly. The man was instrumental in getting the uncultured, ignoramus George Bush to invade, occupy and destroy Iraq, resulting in the decimation of the Arab country and annihilation of hundreds of thousands its citizens.

To justify the Anglo-American crusade against Iraq, Blair resorted to every conceivable cheap tactic, from brash, brazen lying to the British people to concocting wild tales about Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction and “imminent” onslaught on western civilization.

And when it became crystal clear that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, Blair didn’t have the guts to say “sorry, I erred.”

With regard to the Palestinians, for whom this pathological liar we are told will try to create a state, Blair seemed to have been quite faithful to the Balfourian traditions whereby Palestinians are viewed as children of a lesser God whose land, lives and rights can be totally ignored.

In 2006, Blair ostensibly welcomed the idea of Palestinian legislative elections. However, when the elections were held and the Islamic group Hamas emerged victorious, Blair suddenly lost his balance and joined Israel and the Jewish-controlled Bush Administration in boycotting, blockading and isolating the new Palestinian government.

Blair enthusiastically supported the extremely callous siege on Palestinians, including the seizure by Israel of Palestinian customs revenues, which impoverished and starved millions of innocent men, women and children for no guilt they committed apart from exercising their democratic freedoms.

This was the behavior of a man who constantly preached to the peoples of the Middle East about the virtues of democracy and human rights, while in reality doing every thing possible to undermine and undo the outcome of democratic and transparent elections, closely monitored by observers from around the world, including former US President Jimmy Carter.

With his spasmodic reaction to the outcome of Palestinian elections, Blair, in concert with Bush, harrowed to impose the so-called “quartet conditions” on Hamas, including recognizing Israel, accepting outstanding agreements between Israel and the Palestinian Authority and renouncing armed resistance against the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

However, when Palestinian leaders demanded reciprocity from Israel, e.g. an Israeli recognition of a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, Blair remained silent.

Indeed, an honest broker, a true peacemaker would have readily accepted the fair concept of mutuality and reciprocity, including mutual recognition, mutual cessation of violence and mutual acceptance of all outstanding UN resolutions, including 242 and 338.

The fact that Blair never came close to demanding Israeli reciprocity in contentious sphere, like ending or even suspending Israel’s mass terror against the Palestinians, testifies to the man’s wanton hypocrisy and bias toward Israel.

In truth, Blair has never shown any meaningful opposition to Israel’s unmitigated theft of Palestinian land as well as the construction of numerous Jewish-only settlements and transfer of hundreds of thousands of Israeli citizens onto the occupied territories.

Last year, when Israel launched its genocidal war on Lebanon, destroying much of the Lebanese civilian infrastructure and dropping millions of cluster bomblets throughout the virtually defenseless country, Blair refused to support an early ceasefire, apparently in order to allow Israel to murder and maim more Lebanese civilians, which it did.

Undoubtedly, this manifestly criminal conduct, which only complemented the criminality of George Bush and Ehud Olmert, makes him utterly unfit for peace mediation between the world’s last practitioners of occupation and apartheid on the one hand and their helpless, tormented victims, the Palestinian people, on the other. True peace mediation, after all, requires honesty and impartiality, neither of which Blair possesses.

To make a long story short, it is a foregone conclusion that Blair won’t have the moral honesty, let alone the courage, to call the spade a spade whenever it is in Israel’s hands.

Blair won’t tell his equally deceitful colleague, Mr. Olmert, that Israel is an occupying power and that the West Bank and East Jerusalem and Gaza Strip are occupied territories pursuant international law. He won’t tell Olmert that each and every Jewish settlement build on occupied Arab land since 1967 is illegal and must be dismantled. He won’t tell Olmert that the “Separation war” is illegal and must be brought down and that the entire apartheid system being adopted throughout Palestine is immoral, illegal and incompatible with international law. He won’t tell Olmert that Palestinian refugees uprooted from their homes and towns must be allowed to return and reclaim their property.

Needless to say, if Blair can’t be expected to say what ought to be said, it will be futile to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Finally, it is really lamentable that such a perpetual, pathological liar is entrusted with the sublime task of bringing peace to the Middle East. The task of making peace is simply too paramount to be entrusted to criminals and liars, no matter how much they are celebrated in Washington and Tel Aviv.

Perhaps the most appropriate thing one could say in this regard is that Blair’s appointment as Middle East peace envoy reflects the immense moral decay engulfing our world. Surely, this is a very bad omen for the future of humanity.