If Gaza then was an open-air prison, today it resembles hell on Earth. Israel’s war against Hamas, which will pass the two-year mark next week with the anniversary of the October 7 attacks, has killed more than 66,000 Palestinians and reduced most of the strip to rubble.
Undeterred by past failure, Blair, 72, believes he is the man who can help break the deadlock and oversee the reconstruction of Gaza.
Blair was not at the White House this week when US President Donald Trump stood beside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to announce his 20-point peace plan for Gaza. But he loomed large over the event. Trump announced that Blair would serve on a Gaza peace board, with the US president himself acting as chair. “Good man. Very good man,” Trump said of Blair, who volleyed back praise in return.
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In a statement, he lauded Trump’s plan as “bold and intelligent” and the “best chance” to end the war. Which was hardly surprising given he essentially co-wrote the document. Trump’s peace plan draws heavily on a detailed proposal developed by Blair’s think tank, the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, for a technocratic transitional authority to run Gaza when the war is over. Netanyahu has endorsed the plan, which he helped write, while making clear he will intensify the war against Hamas if the group fails to sign on.
Blair met with Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner at the White House at the end of August, and appears to have played an important role in persuading him to abandon his idea of the mass displacement of Gazans from the strip, which was widely panned as ethnic cleansing. “No one will be forced to leave Gaza, and those who wish to leave will be free to do so and free to return,” Trump’s peace plan states. While Trump wants the credit – ideally in the form of a Nobel Peace Prize – for achieving peace in Gaza, it is Blair who would be responsible for implementing the plan.
Blair’s involvement has already aroused significant controversy and criticism, even as his plan remains just that – a plan. Amin Saikal, a professor of Middle Eastern studies at the Australian National University, gives Blair some credit for shifting Trump’s position.
“This is the first time the Americans have come up with a plan that doesn’t involve the depopulation of Gaza. That’s a positive development,” Saikal says.
A staffer from Blair’s institute helped draft a Boston Consulting Group proposal for “Gaza Riviera”, with artificial islands off the coast similar to Dubai’s Palm Island, but Blair distanced himself from the idea and has insisted Gaza must be for Gazans.
Still, Saikal argues that Blair’s high-profile, hands-on role on Trump’s peace board risks undermining the enterprise. “I don’t think many Palestinians will trust Tony Blair,” he argues. “They thought that he failed in his Quartet role and was viewed as very pro-Israel by many Palestinians. That’s still the case.”
When Blair resigned, the Palestinian Authority’s former chief negotiator, Nabil Shaath, said he had “achieved so very little because of his gross efforts to please the Israelis … He gradually reduced his role to that of asking the Israelis to take down a barrier here or a barrier there.” Netanyahu, meanwhile, thanked him for his “great efforts to advance stability and peace in the region”.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese met with Tony Blair while in London.Credit: x/@AlboMP
Then there was Blair’s enthusiastic backing for George W. Bush’s 2003 invasion of Iraq based on overhyped claims of weapons of mass destruction. It resulted in a disastrous quagmire, and undermined his credibility throughout the Middle East.
Despite this, Ian Parmeter, who served as Australian ambassador to Lebanon, is more optimistic about Blair’s potential role in Gaza.
“I don’t see Blair’s involvement as a particular difficulty, and it could be a positive,” says the research scholar at ANU’s Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies. “He knows a lot of the key players. He knows the region very well and will have a realistic idea of the task involved.”
When Prime Minister Anthony Albanese visited London last week, the first stop on his itinerary was a trip to see Blair. Albanese was a fierce opponent of the invasion of Iraq, but spoke warmly about Blair’s potential to improve life for Israelis and Palestinians. “Tony Blair is someone who’s always played a constructive role, he’s someone who does look for solutions,” Albanese told reporters.
So what exactly does Blair envisage for post-war Gaza? A detailed 21-page document prepared by Blair’s think tank spells out his vision for what was called the Gaza International Transitional Authority. The plan was published in full this week by Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
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The plan envisages an international governing body – which has now been essentially rebranded as Trump’s peace board – taking control of Gaza in the short term. The document says the board would include at least one qualified Palestinian representative, a senior UN official, leading international business figures and a “strong representation of Muslim members to ensure regional legitimacy and cultural credibility”. In its early days, the body would be based not in Gaza but in Egypt or Jordan.
Initially, there is no role in the plan for the Palestinian Authority, the internationally recognised body that is dominated by Hamas’ more moderate and secular rival Fatah. A technocratic Palestinian Executive Authority would instead be established to oversee the delivery of healthcare, education and infrastructure services.
Meanwhile, an international stabilisation force would conduct targeted operations to prevent the resurgence of armed groups, disrupt weapons smuggling and protect the delivery of humanitarian aid.
A separate Gaza Investment Promotion and Economic Development Authority would oversee “the design, packaging and delivery of high-impact investment projects, including housing schemes, major infrastructure, and special economic zones”. Trump’s 20-point plan echoes this idea, saying that a “special economic zone will be established with preferred tariff and access rates to be negotiated with participating countries”.
Hell on Earth: Israel’s bombing campaign has left much of Gaza in ruins.Credit: AP
Saikal says the plan’s focus on profit – and lack of meaningful representation for Palestinians – is a major flaw. “Many Palestinians will view this as a neo-mercantilist, imperialist plan,” he says. “The Palestinians have not been consulted at all: this was not a process of self-determination.”
Josh Paul, who served as a national security consultant in the Coalition Provisional Authority for Iraq, slammed the plan as “sugar-coated neocolonialism”, insisting: “It will not work, and it should not be trusted”.
“A Blair-led government of Gaza would, just like the American government of Iraq, be an incompatible transplant that would be rejected by the body, leading to a cycle of violence and escalation that is entirely avoidable and in no one’s interest,” Paul wrote in The Guardian.
For Trump and Blair’s vision to come into effect, Hamas would need to agree to it after playing no role in the process. Here, the situation is entirely different from the Good Friday Agreement, in which all the key Irish factions played an active role in the negotiations.
Trump gave Hamas a deadline of “three or four days” to respond, and the world is waiting for a definitive answer. One possibility is that Hamas accepts the plan as a basis for future negotiations but demands concessions and modifications.
While welcoming the release of the plan, Parmeter says: “I give it a less than 50 per cent chance of success. I hope I’m wrong.” While hoping for the best, Saikal is also sceptical. “There are so many unanswered questions at the moment,” he says, “and not enough details.”
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