The arrival of January 2024 did not provide any respite to the battered and besieged Palestinian population. Instead and despite disagreements, the Zionist regime’s war cabinet remains adamant that the genocide and status quo must continue in Gaza. One of the grand schemes in place alongside the reckless targeting of Lebanon and Syria, is to ‘benefit’ from the services of a war criminal and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair to facilitate the exodus of the Palestinians by acting as a so-called mediator.
Enlisting Blair for the Israeli cause is not surprising given the historical linkages between conservatives in the West and Zionists in Palestine. Yet the fact that the former Prime Minister was chosen to broker for Tel Aviv on the question of Palestinian deportation, alarmed some of “Israel’s” most vocal supporters such as the United States. As one of the most controversial members of the Tories in the United Kingdom, Blair would liaise with Western countries to take in Palestinian refugees, an action indicative of a genocidal and hatemongering mindset.
The confirmation of the secret visit to Tel Aviv came from reports which were acknowledged by the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Channel 12 of the Zionist regime, for example, confirmed that Blair had secretly visited “Israel” and held meetings with Benjamin Netanyahu and Benny Gantz. His role after the Gaza war was also discussed which includes the responsibility of mediating, liaising and convincing Western countries to welcome refugees from the besieged Gaza Strip after “Israel” seizes its barbaric genocide which has otherwise claimed over 23,000 lives. This constitutes an attempt to expel nearly 2 million Palestinians from the Gaza strip under the so-called ‘voluntary evacuation’ order which has been championed by members of the war cabinet such as Bezalel Smotrich.
This is no small deal. While the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change can distance itself from these allegations and dismiss reports received by the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs as fallacies, few can deny the role that Blair played in perpetuating conflicts, wars, and attacks on Muslims, Muslim societies and Muslim countries across the Middle East. Even fewer can deny that Blair played a pivotal role in the 2003 Iraq invasion which deposed the Saddam Hussein regime and left the country with nothing but decades of sectarian violence, unrest, terrorism, and displacement. The Iraq Inquiry initiated by former Prime Minister Gordon Brown in 2009 and published in 2016, clearly revealed that under Blair, the United Kingdom undermined the authority of the United Nations Security Council while supporting the invasion and failed to establish justifications for the necessity of war.
Blair was instrumental in luring the UK into a military invasion against a Baghdad regime which was accused of, but never found guilty of possessing weapons of mass destruction. Also, by bypassing the UNSC, the United Kingdom along with the United States brazenly conducted illegal military operations which resulted in the deaths of 100,000 Iraqi civilians. The fall of the Hussein regime also ushered in chaos, instability and the rise of terrorist groups which continues to haunt the wider region. As a result, his legacy remains divisive and tainted even within the United Kingdom despite support from the Conservative Party.
Furthermore, Blair’s approach towards the Middle East mirrors that of the Netanyahu war cabinet. While Netanyahu conveniently labels all Palestinian resistance movements as terrorists, Blair equated Saddam Hussain with terrorism. Before deposing Saddam Hussein in 2003, the rationale cited by both London and Washington D.C. was that he was a ruthless dictator and a sponsor of terrorism. A closer examination of Saddam’s orientation, however, revealed otherwise. He was a Baathist or an Arab nationalist who was vehemently opposed to the Salafi-Jihadist nature of terrorist groups such as the Islamic State which was previously active in Syria and Iraq or Al Shabab in Somalia. Equating Saddam with terrorism failed to prevent the proliferation of terrorist groups throughout the region and contributed to widespread instability in the Middle East.
Such a legacy of murder and interventionism has resulted in some of the leading theologians, human rights activists and directors such as Arundhati Roy, Bishop Desmond Tutu and Harold Pinter calling for Blair to be prosecuted for war crimes at the International Criminal Court. This means that “Israel” having Blair act as a bridge between “Tel Aviv” and the West for the displacement of Palestinians will constitute a heinous crime. Under his leadership, convincing capitals ranging from Brussels to Berlin to open up their borders and receive Palestinian refugees will never be based on a humanitarian imperative but is rather an attempt to ethnically cleanse an indigenous population that is already under apartheid and was previously subjected to the 1948 Nakba.
Blair’s task is also in line with hardline Zionist Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich’s vision. Smotrich is a long-time champion of settlements and believes in the erasure of Palestinian identities. He maintains that the Palestinians were not an ethnic group and had to emigrate from their territories which belonged to “Israel”. By seeking to appoint Blair however, “Israel” is attempting to whitewash the former Prime Minister’s crimes against humanity and promote the Smotrich project as a panacea for the Gaza war even though the genocide has resulted in 60% of the territory’s infrastructure being destroyed, nearly 2 million residents being displaced and water, food, shelter and health facilities running out.
What is clear, however, is that Tony Blair is a war criminal and him being encouraged to take up the role of a mediator fits into “Israel’s” agenda of initiating a Nakba 2024 against the Palestinians.
