TIMES ONLINE: Hamas must somehow be brought into the Middle East peace process because the policy of isolating Gaza in the quest for a settlement will not work, Tony Blair has told The Times.
The former prime minister implicitly criticises the strategy followed by the Bush Administration and Israel of focusing all peace and reconstruction efforts on the West Bank. “It was half of what we needed,” he said.
In an interview with Ginny Dougary in the Saturday Magazine, Mr Blair says that the strategy of “pushing Gaza aside” and trying to create a Palestinian state on the West Bank “was never going to work and will never work”. He hints in references to how peace was eventually achieved in Northern Ireland that the time may be approaching to talk to Hamas ... “My basic predisposition is that in a situation like this you talk to everybody.”
He suggests that the policy was behind last month's ferocious reopening of hostilities between Israel and Hamas in Gaza that were believed to have left more than 1,000 people dead.
Mr Blair, speaking after talks with the new US envoy George Mitchell, says that Gaza will not be pushed aside because there are 1.25 million people there who want a Palestinian state.
Mr Blair, the Middle East envoy for the Quartet group of the US, UN, Russia and the European Union, clearly believes that the Obama Administration is committed to a fresh effort to secure peace and appears to have been waiting for the change of government to make his strongest criticism so far of the Israeli blockade of Gaza. Hamas Must Be Brought into Peace Process, Says Tony Blair >>> Philip Webster, Political Editor | Friday, January 30, 2009
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