Blair's Middle East 'nightmare'

By Jeremy Bowen
Middle East editor, BBC News
Last Updated: Thursday, 5 October 2006, 11:56 GMT 12:56 UK

Mr Blair admitted he "may not succeed" in the Middle East

In his emotional final speech as leader to the Labour Party conference in Manchester, Tony Blair promised that he would use the time he has left as British Prime Minister to pursue peace in the Middle East.

Can he make a difference? After all, he has only months, and the Middle East is looking as bad as it has in years.

This is what he said: "From now until I leave office I will dedicate myself, with the same commitment I have given to Northern Ireland, to advancing peace between Israel and Palestine. I may not succeed. But I will try because peace in the Middle East is a defeat for terrorism."

The great irony about trying to advance the cause of peace between Israel and the Palestinians is that many people in the Middle East and in the rest of the world already think they know what the final deal will look like.

They believe that the only way ahead is to create an independent and sovereign Palestinian state alongside Israel.

Creating a Palestinian state might be risky, for Israel especially, but Mr Blair, like many other prominent leaders around the world, believes that it is the best option.

The irony is that while they might know where they want to go, they do not know how to get there - or, worse, they can see the road ahead, and do not want to pay the toll that will be necessary to go down it.

Roadmap

Back in the 1990s, when the "peace process" existed, neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians ever really demonstrated that they were prepared to pay the price of peace.

For both sides, that means giving up things that are very dear to them.

Among other things, Palestinians would have to accept that refugees who left their homes in what became Israel will not get them back.

Israelis would have to accept that they have to give up land that they took in war, and that they believe is theirs.

We can only speculate about what Mr Blair might want to do to break the impasse.

When the BBC approached his press office at Downing Street to talk about his Middle East policy, the answer was that "it's too early to discuss anything yet".

When Mr Blair was recently in Jerusalem, and in Ramallah on the occupied West Bank, he called for a revival of the so-called "roadmap".

This was a stage-by-stage plan formulated in 2003 that was supposed to have produced a Palestinian state by 2005.

The problem was that neither the Palestinians nor the Israelis fulfilled even the requirements of stage one.

cont..........
LinkHere