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Middle East Quartet Envoy Tony Blair. (AP)
Tony Blair: Israel's options are difficult, but Gaza is not staying still
By Barak Ravid
Tags: israel news, Quartet 

There aren't many things as effective at spoiling Quartet envoy Tony Blair's mood and bursting optimism as the two words "Gaza Strip." Compared with the positive results his work has attained in the West Bank, it appears the situation is only deteriorating in Gaza. One thing is clear to Blair: Both the next Israeli and U.S. administrations will have to change their Gaza policies.

"We have to be very clear on one thing," he says. "The present situation is not harming Hamas in Gaza but it is harming the people." We spoke in the sitting room next to his office in East Jerusalem's American Colony Hotel, where he works one week each month. For a year and a half now, Blair has been visiting our distressed Middle Eastern neighborhood, maneuvering between Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu and the two Ehuds - Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Ehud Barak. Or he has been muttering names of places most Israelis are unfamiliar with, like the "sheep" roadblock or Jalameh.

Gaza, incidentally, is one place he hasn't been. In July this year his convoy was supposed to leave Jerusalem for the Gaza Strip, but then the Shin Bet security service phoned. Intelligence had come in with a warning about intentions to carry out a terror attack on Blair and his people during a planned visit to the renovation of the sewage system in Beit Lahia in the northern Strip. A disappointed Blair had to remain in Jerusalem.
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A week ago he met with a group of Gaza businessmen, perhaps the last ones who remain. In the reality of the blockade of the Strip and the closed crossing points, business success is measured by the size of the goods that can pass through the tunnels in Rafah. Anyone accustomed to exporting and importing by truck remains unemployed.

"We are irrelevant," one of the Palestinian businessmen told him. "The legitimate economy in Gaza is being replaced by an illegitimate economy." It was this conversation, along with a harsh report from the World Bank, that prompted Blair to fire off a letter to Olmert demanding for transfer of cash from banks in the West Bank to banks in Gaza. "We should be making sure that the legitimate system survives," says Blair. "The money that comes to Hamas is coming through the tunnels."

Concerning Gaza's inhabitants, it is clear that Blair is speaking from the depths of his heart. The current equation, by which the border crossings are closed in response to the firing of Qassam rockets appears pointless to him, and he insists on the necessity of doing something about the policy on the blockade. Two weeks ago Blair met with Hillary Clinton, the incoming American secretary of state, and with Gen. James Jones, who will be national security adviser. He says the two understand that a change of strategy on Gaza is necessary. "I'd rather that they would declare their policy rather than me, but when I say that I don't think that the current situation is sustainable, I think most people who would analyze it think the same.

"I understand the problems from Israel's point of view as well," continues Blair. "It is a difficult situation. Extremists are firing rockets into Israeli cities with the aim of killing civilians - these could land on a school and it will be a disaster. I have been prime minister of a democracy and I know what it is like - if that type of thing is happening to your people you are expected to act. The problem is that Israel's options are difficult."

Blair supported the truce with Hamas and encouraged Barak and Olmert to agree to an Egyptian proposal. He says that at the time he thought it was the right thing to do. Today, however, it is evident from his remarks that he too has reservations about continuing the truce in its previous form. "I argued for the calm and I think it was a sensible thing that it happened, but we need to get a resolution of this issue in a way that allows progress toward peace. Any Palestinian state needs to [include both] Gaza and the West Bank. Nothing else would work."

I ask him several times what he proposes. Here Blair stops and goes silent. "I have ideas about this," he says, "but it is not sensible to talk about it at the moment." Reading between the lines, one can see that for him, unlike other European leaders, all options are on the table regarding Gaza. Livni and Vice Premier Haim Ramon are also against the status quo in there, I say to him. They want to topple the Hamas government by force. Here as well, Blair replies circuitously: "I think we should be clear that we have got to get to a place where we are offering the people of Gaza a clearer way out."

But are you concerned about the possibility of a military operation in Gaza?

"All the options for Israel are difficult, but the present option is difficult, too. I have already said enough." Gaza, he notes, "is not staying still, because there is no doubt that Hamas is strengthening its grip at the moment, and my own view is that if the people of Gaza thought that there is an alternative and that they could actually rejoin normality again, I think that they would opt for it, so the reason I am being coy about solutions and strategies is that I think that the time to discuss this publicly is not now.

"There is sometimes a thought that we could push ahead in the West Bank and just forget about Gaza and put it aside. I don't think it is possible. Gaza will not be set aside and we will have to deal with it. Obviously we would like it to be dealt with politically and in a way that helps the people and the moderate cause."

Blair doesn't seem to think the answer will come via Hamas. "I can't see any basis for an agreement between the international community and Hamas. How do you negotiate the two-state solution with people if they don't accept your right to exist? That's the problem. Some people tell me, 'You spoke with the IRA,' and I tell them we only did that once they accepted that the solution will only be through peaceful means."

In discussing the situation in the West Bank, Blair smiles again and his melancholy transforms into broad enthusiasm. One after another he ticks off the improvements made over the past year in the lives of the Palestinians in the West Bank. In the context of the world financial crisis, Blair gives special emphasis to the improved economy.

"[Palestinian Prime Minister] Salam Fayyad was saying at the Palestinian investment conference in London that unemployment has fallen," notes Blair. "There are not many places where you can say that." He lists the renewed economic activity in the Jenin area, the activity of the Palestinian Authority's trained security forces, the process of rehabilitating the courts and prisons and the high occupancy rates in Bethlehem for Christmas. Blair also acknowledges that many of his plans and expectations have remained on paper only.

"I wanted more, and I think that if there hadn't been a difficult situation in Israeli politics lately we could have gotten more. But I don't think that there is any doubt that there has been change in the West Bank for the better," says Blair.

"When I had a meeting here with Fayyad a few weeks ago and we were talking about access and movement restrictions, etc., right at the beginning I said - okay, but who actually thinks that things are better in the West Bank than they were the same time last year? There is no doubt that things are better now. Don't misunderstand me - we have a lot to do, but there is a basis on which we can build."

One of the things that surprised Blair during his visit this week is the sleepy election campaign being conducted by Israel's candidates for prime minister. He wonders why this is so. One person who boasts at every opportunity about his close relationship with Blair is Likud head Netanyahu. "I met with him 12 times during the past year," Netanyahu says. "We see eye to eye, especially concerning the economic peace plan."

Blair stresses repeatedly that he is not interested in intervening in the Israeli elections, but unlike many Europeans, he does not show any fears that a Netanyahu victory will harm the peace process.

"Yes I hear it all the time," Blair says. "But you know - what I have learned from the Northern Ireland process is, first, the utter futility of speculating what the electorate can do. The second thing is that surprising things can happen. If you would ask most of the people in Northern Ireland will you ever get a deal with [Protestant leader] Ian Paisley, they would say 'absolutely and totally impossible,' and in the end he was the one who did it. I am not applying this analogy to Netanyahu or anybody else - I am simply saying you don't prejudge these things.

"I have a clear view on this - there will be a continuation of the political process after the elections in Israel," says Blair. "In the end, you've got to try and reach an agreement on the critical issues. My point simply is, if you want to get an agreement, the best thing is to get support for it from the bottom up, rather than try and force an agreement on lopsided foundations. That won't work."

So Netanyahu is right when he says you see things eye-to-eye?

"I don't want to get into Israeli politics. I won't. When you get to an election period - you know I have been to a few of those. Just to make it clear, my view is that the political process and the bottom-up approach need to go hand in hand. The important thing is that you will not get successful political negotiations unless the reality on the ground will push people toward this direction. People will not conclude a political agreement if their daily reality contradicts it."

At the Saban Forum discussions earlier this month in Washington, D.C., in which Blair took part, there was talk that the international community will have to come to terms with a nuclear Iran and prepare to deal with the new reality. Blair refuses to take this line.

"I don't think we should compromise on this at all," says Blair. "A nuclear Iran is a very bad thing - not just for Israel. It would immediately start proliferation across the region and would create a very big threat to the world's security. I really don't think it is sensible to send out any other message to the Iranians other than a very firm message of No. What is really important is that they shouldn't misread signals because in my view that is the position of the Western governments - they are not going to permit Iran gaining nuclear weapons."

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