In his new role as envoy to the Middle East, Tony Blair will be charged with shoring up Palestinian institutions, but not with trying to nail down a peace deal between Israelis and Palestinians because Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, is handling that job herself, administration officials said Wednesday.

The lack of a link between final status talks and the building of Palestinian institutions is the crux of why previous attempts have been unsuccessful.

“Unless he has the authority to deal with the Israelis on the issue of movement and lifting of barriers, he’s not going to get very far,” said Aaron David Miller, a scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center who was a senior adviser for Arab-Israeli relations at the State Department under the last three presidents.

Writing in a syndicated column, Rami Khouri, editor at large at The Daily Star in Beirut, said, “Appointing Tony Blair as special envoy for Arab-Israeli peace is something like appointing the Emperor Nero to be the chief fireman of Rome.”

The Israeli government’s perpetual quest for Liebensraum was enabled from the beginning by US guarantees of support. Since there’s never been a flunky-in-chief more devoted than Tony Blair – does anyone expect any changes?



  1. moss says:

    The picture will work even better when Blair completes his conversion to Catholicism.

    I predict the next elective office he runs for will be Pope.

  2. MikeN says:

    Why shouldn’t he be sent there? He was pushing peace deals with Bill Clinton, and he loves nation building.

  3. B. Dog says:

    If he wanted to be helpful, he could propose Northern Ireland as a new homeland for those Palestinean folk.

  4. bobbo says:

    “The lack of a link between final status talks and the building of Palestinian institutions is the crux of why previous attempts have been unsuccessful.”

    No, the crux has been that the Jews were plunked down in the middle of a bunch of “anything not Muslim” hating arabs and the arabs want every Jew in the area killed. Now THAT is what I call a crux.

    Actually, the germ of a solution is staring at us right now. Make Gaza an independent state, Make West Bank an independent State. When they pop-off two days later, invade them and evict the arabs to other arab states and be done with it. You can’t integrate people who want to kill you. Harsh, but real. ((sorry to mash two idea here.))

  5. ethanol says:

    Bobbo (#4),
    I think you are on to something in your last paragraph…

  6. James Armstrong says:

    Bush has never been Blair’s boss.

    It just seems that way because they both are puppets of the hidden reptilian overlords.

  7. MikeN says:

    Actually, it is Bush and Clinton who are Blair’s poodles. He’s the one who got Clinton into Kosovo. He’s this big humanitarian crusader for human rights by force.

  8. Sounds The Alarm says:

    Tony must miss the sure touch of duhbya’s leash.

  9. Frank IBC says:

    Hate to be a pedant, Eidard, but the word is lebensraum, “room for living”, not liebensraum, “room for loving”. Or perhaps you’re thinking of Liebesträume? Either way, attempting to draw a parallel between Israel’s behavior in the Arab-Israeli conflict and that of the Nazis is disgusting.

  10. Alex says:

    “The Israeli government’s perpetual quest for Liebensraum was enabled from the beginning by US guarantees of support. ”

    Dvorak you’re an idiot!

    The only quest Israel is embarked on is trying to find a way to stop its citizens (of any religion) from being mauled and slaughtered. The Israeli government is not only begging to give away land to the arabs in exchange for peace, but has in fact given them STRATEGICALLY VITAL land with not even an empty promise of peace in return.

    You would think after Israel withdrew from Gaza that the international community would point a finger at the arabs and say “Now you give. Your dreams of genocide have come to an end!”

    But in fact you see just the opposite; a poignant example being the ban of Israeli academicians by their British counterparts – a most blatant instance of Antisemitism guised as a political statement (how the hell does hamstringing Israeli education lead itself to promoting peace in the region).

    Will there ever be peace in that region? Well, considering it’s against Islamic law for ANY government in the world (including America’s) to be non-Islamic I seriously doubt it.

  11. OhForTheLoveOf says:

    #10 – Alex, don’t be a moron.

    This is a collective blog with multiple editors. Dvorak owns the press but he gives free reign to his various contributors to post. The point is, Dvorak didn’t post this, and even if he did, having a different opinion from you does not make him a moron.

    #9 – While you may have many personal qualities that deserve self-loathing, being a pedant isn’t one of them. I, for one, appreciated learning a little lesson about language.

  12. hhopper says:

    Alex said, “Dvorak you’re an idiot!”

    Dvorak didn’t post this.
    ________________________________________________________
    Just great! Now we have a Catholic trying to settle the problems between the Muslims and the Jews.

  13. Rob R says:

    [Duplicate post. – ed.]

  14. Rob R says:

    Regardless of who posted it, I also agree that lebensraum is the wrong word and it’s not helpful to imply people are Nazis. I think the better comparison is Manifest Destiny.

  15. bobbo says:

    I’ll be pedantic. Does anybody deny Americas guarantee of support for Israel??? I hope thats not debateable.

    So, liebestram ((I will always prefer room for loving)) is the bone of contention? Well Mr. Eideard said they have a continuing quest to establish their living space. He did not say what everyone assumes that they are seeking to increase their living space ((arguable depending on what time frames you look at)). Israel has been under constant attack since its formation to keep itself intact, to maintain its living space, it is indeed a quest to be recognized and not attacked by their neighbors.

    Any disagreement is a quibble and pedantic.

  16. Rob R says:

    #14 bobbo,
    Israel is under constant attack because Zionism has never has never adequately dealt with the Palestinians. That’s a serious issue, not a quibble.
    1. Israelis argue that they bought a lot of Palestinian land. Well Japanese own a lot of Hawaii, does that mean they can establish a separate state there?
    2. The British gave the area to the Israelis. Well, the fact that the Russians took Latvia away from the Swedes, never affected the ethnic Latvians belief that Latvia was their country.
    3. By the standards of conquest, Israel has been extremely merciful (compare to what we did to the Indians)
    This isn’t a bad guy versus good guy issue which you seem to imply it is.

  17. Frank IBC says:

    Bobbo – no one denies that the USA and Israel are allies.

    But the use of the phrase “lebensraum” is offensive in this context because it refers specifically to the Nazis’ policies in eastern Europe. If Eidard had meant nothing more than “living space”, he should have left it in English, not used the German term.

  18. fred says:

    The topic of the post was Tony Blair’s role in the Middle East.

    Blair was the man who took Britain into an unnecessary, illegal, immoral war against the express wishes and better judgment of the overwhelming majority of the electorate whom he was supposed to serve. He achieved this by a mixture of spin, distortion and downright lies. He is a disgrace to both his country and his religion and Britain is well rid of him.

    If this is the standard of “statesmanship” that he intends to apply to the building of Palestinian institutions then I can only fear that he will make the situation worse and not better.

  19. bobbo says:

    15—“Zionism has never adequately dealt with the Palestinians.” That does sound like a “final solution” as we did with the indians, australians with the aboriginals, New Zealanders with the Mauri, South Afticans with the blacks, Homo Sapiens with the Neanderthal, Turks with the Kurds, etc throughout history.

    When one culture takes over land, if they don’t “adequately deal” with the locals, the locals will be problems forever. For whatever other ideals apply, that is what history teaches.

    My quibble is a bit obtuse, not worth the argument. How can Israel finally deal with the Palestinians when what the Paliestinians want is the death of all Jews?

    You are making up the good guy/bad guy issue out of whole cloth. Who occupies land is never an issue of right/wrong as your post demonstrates. It is always and only an issue of power.

  20. bobbo says:

    17—It only means that if that is your orientation. Only Eidread knows what he meant, and since he used the wrong word to begin with, I’m not too sure he is sure.

    I should delete the above, but I’ll leave it to show —whatever it shows.

    I love the discipline of using the dictionary:
    Lebensraum: Space sought for occupation by a nation whose population is expanding. Now, I still think my argument is pretty clever, its just wrong is the only thing wrong with it.

    I’ve read articles on the Camp David Peace accords breaking down because Israel “actually” wanted to expand, and there is evidence for it in the proferred record. On balance, my observation and reading suggests Israel would give up land for peace if they thought the peace would come.

  21. bobbo says:

    14—Help me out. What again is the difference between Nazi idea of lebenstraum and American idea of Manifest Destiny? They are identical on every measure I can think of except language spoken and time it took?

  22. Rob R says:

    #19,
    You should be careful in imparting a Nazi view to people who engage you. There’s nothing in my word “adequate” that implies murdering people. The fact is that Zionism doesn’t address the the problem of the people they wanted to displace adequately. Whether it meant giving them citizenship, convincing other nations to take them on, shipping them to Germany instead to Turks, whatever.

    And clearly there is right and wrong in conquest and war. Otherwise, why are we talking about Hitler as the poster boy for evil. Stalin was evil. The trail of tears was evil. Abe Lincoln & Robert E. Lee were not evil. Although, Lee was defending an evil system.

    I don’t see the Israelis or Palestinians as evil nor as amoral power mad monsters. But rather people trying to come to terms with a terrible situation. (That doesn’t mean that some members of both groups are not evil). But to reduce this to a power issue is simplistic.

    On your point in 21, you may be right, I’ll think about it.

  23. bobbo says:

    22—I think you already covered it by saying the comparison was simplistic?

    So, you don’t like the “power” analysis? Name one time in history when land was given up in order to keep outsiders happy? ((Ok, I can think of many, so when “homeland” was given up without the threat of immediate force by the other to achieve that end-and not including colonies.))

    When the subject is the implication of the use of the word Lebenstraum, it follows pretty closely that “not dealt with” could be interpreted the same way.

    Hitler is the poster boy for evil because he lost. Dont be a silly bunny.

  24. Rob R says:

    23
    Per your 2nd paragraph:
    No one did anything when Czech and Slovakia split.Lenin let Finland & the Baltics go. I could probably figure out a bunch more, but it’s late.

    Stalin didn’t lose, silly bunny.

  25. Rob R says:

    23
    Per your 2nd paragraph:
    No one did anything when Czech and Slovakia split.Lenin let Finland & the Baltics go. I could probably figure out a bunch more, but it’s late.

    Stalin didn’t lose, silly bunny. Win or lose, eventually people come to terms with the evil done even by the winners. And it’s rarely a positive review or something they think should be repeated.

  26. bobbo says:

    24–Finland and the Baltics are “homeland” to the Russians????
    Ah, maybe so. History displays every combination and possible outcome there is. Still, in the majority of cases, countries fight to maintain their land. Whoever wins, writes the history, and thinks god was on their side.

    Stalin??? Still gets positive reviews in too many places, but I agree, another exception of History. I believe your answer to Manifest Destiny may hold the key. What do Indians think of America? but they really were almost wiped out and havent recovered. Perhaps more relevantly, look at Mexicans constantly harping about how GOUSA stole “their land” without a thought about how they stole it from their natives? Think the GOUSA should give-up nine southern states “because it really belongs to Mexico?” umhh huh!!

  27. joshua says:

    I just left the Mustard and bobbo show a couple posts up….now I’m in the bobbo show again. Geesh.


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