What is Tony Blair's involvement in Biden’s Israel Gaza peace plan?

Right, so Joe Biden has come up with a three point plan for peace between Israel and Hamas, which is of course getting a fair bit of media attention as you might imagine, but as it turns out, in a not very prominently discussed aspect of this story, a throwaway comment almost in Sky News coverage of this story, Biden is very much not acting alone here, though getting all the credit depending on the source material you read, because another man is in the shadows involved in this plan and it a guy who has had designs on Gaza himself for a while and is frankly the last person on Earth, pretty much, you’d want to see get involved there, because apparently one of the people Joe Biden has been involved with to develop this latest plan piece, is a man about as welcome on the political scene as nappy rash, a certain Anthony Charles Lynton Blair.
Right, so Genocide Joe Biden, still trying to rescue his reputation whilst remaining consistently on Israel’s side, has come up with a new peace plan and when announced it apparently took people by surprise, nobody knew something was being cooked up here, just days after Hamas had apparently told mediators that without the Israeli assault on Gaza being ended, there would be no more discussions from them, though the media handily omit to say this is following Netanyahu’s refusal to back a peace deal that Hamas had actually agreed to, though that said, they likely only did so to wrong foot Israel, and succeeded, but that was covered in another video I won’t cover that one here.
It is a stripped down version of previous plans, broken down into three fairly straightforward stages, though more detail will likely follow publicly depending on how it gets received.
The first stage is a 6 week ceasefire, during which the IDF will withdraw from all populated areas of Gaza.
The second stage would involve an exchange of captives and Palestinian prisoners as well as a surge, its being called, that is the word used of humanitarian aid into all parts of the Gaza Strip.
The third phase would be to make the ceasefire permanent and facilitate the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip, decimated as it has been, 60% of clinics, schools, university buildings and places of worship destroyed by the IDF since October 7th.
That is on the face of it, a lot for Israel and Netanyahu to swallow, too much frankly, his government I would imagine, would almost certainly collapse over this, there’s no way the likes of Bezalel Smotrich or Itamar Ben Gvir would accept this deal in my view, but the longer Israel are made to look like the ones blocking any semblance of a ceasefire and an end to this genocide, the worse things will get. Massive protests are again happening throughout Israel and notably in Tel Aviv, demanding Netanyahu go, though still he ignores them, power being all he is concerned about.
Hamas have reacted more positively, the word they have in fact used in reaction to the proposals. Some in the Israeli government have also been pretty positive about this, such as Benny Gantz, a coalition partner of Netanyahu’s Likud Party and importantly the opposition leader Yair Lapid, has pledged support for it, in case Ben Gvir and Co won’t back it, so in theory it would pass a vote at the Knesset, even if Netanyahu’s government collapsed subsequently. Again, when everything is all about Netanyahu and how to keep himself in power, it matters not a bit I shouldn’t think, but he will look more and more a pariah and frankly if Biden doesn’t at that point do something different and not keep acquiescing to the genocidal madman who has boxed himself in with his war in Gaza, he’s going took ever weaker in an election year himself. Not a good place to be, but he’ll have nobody to blame but himself.
However, all this said and done, Biden has not been acting alone as this excerpt from Sky News’ coverage that caught my eye revealed, but might not have been picked up by many others:
‘Tobias Ellwood, the Conservative candidate and former Defence Committee chair, has been speaking to Sky News about this evening's news conference from the White House.
He said the announcement from the US president was "very welcome indeed" - highlighting Washington's analysis that Hamas was no longer capable of carrying out an attack like 7 October.
The deal has come together thanks to the work of the US secretary of state, as well as people like Sir Tony Blair and Foreign Secretary Lord David Cameron behind the scenes, Mr Ellwood said.
The Tory candidate said what was revealed today was "the most viable plan I've seen put on the table that has the potential to move forward".
Asked if he believed Benjamin Netanyahu had been sidelined, Mr Ellwood said the Israeli prime minister was "very much involved", but that his future was "a big question".’
Tony Blair and David Cameron behind the scenes, just look at Iraq and Libya to understand why neither of these people belong within a country mile of anything else to do in the Middle East, but Blair especially, becoming a peace envoy in the Middle East for the so-called Quartet, the UN, EU, US and Russia, following his time as Prime Minister, following his involvement in an illegal war in Iraq that people have for decades now been rightly asking, why the hell is that man still free, still intervening in word events and not in the Hague where he damn well belongs? He is the epitomy of getting away with it and still, he won’t have the common decency to just disappear into obscurity.
Cameron has as usual had his finger in the pulse on all of this as despite apparently being involved in this deal behind the scenes as well, he’s on record now as saying Hamas must accept this deal that they’re putting forward, forgetting that they actually accepted the last one, even now, when trying to broker peace, he has to take Israel’s side, bodes well doesn’t it? How about you stick to pigs and leave politics to others Dave?
But worse than Cameron easily has to be Blair, yet another of his all to rare interventions here.
Now, you can argue, well hang on a minute here Damo, does it really matter who is involved, if peace comes out of this in the end? The plan is not a bad one surely? To which I’d say sure, let’s assume Israel go for this too, I can’t imagine why they would, it would finish Netanyahu, he’s clawing onto power by his fingertips, that said, he has sent negotiators back in, but is still bleating about the need to eliminate Hamas, still putting that in front of, as he clearly has been all along, the rescue of hostages, He doesn’t care about them at all. But let’s entertain the notion that this all goes ahead and the plan is carried out, and peace reigns. What exactly was in it for Tony Blair to ever get involved to begin with?
This is not a guy who has got as rich as he has off the back of his time in power, by doing something for nothing. What is he after, what is he up to?
Well it isn’t just here and now that Blair has been intervening, he’s been opining in the media for the last 8 months now on and off. Last November for example, Blair had a piece put out in the Guardian saying he was open to help if needed to end the crowing crisis at that point, between Israel and Gaza, though did so whilst also denying other reports that he had already been offered a specific role in matters there.
What be that then Damo? Well, Blair maintains an office in Israel from his peace envoy days and in that role would have built up contacts throughout the Middle East, and in light of that, it was reported in the Times of Israel around the same time, that Blair was offered the role of Gaza humanitarian co-ordinator. Israel’s idea of humanitarianism as this excerpt implies:
‘Israel is seeking to install former British prime minister Tony Blair as a humanitarian coordinator for the Gaza Strip, according to a report Sunday, out of a desire to improve the humanitarian situation inside the Palestinian enclave and reduce international pressure as it continues to wage its war on Hamas.
The Ynet news outlet, citing unnamed senior officials, said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hopes to leverage Blair’s experience as former envoy to the region for the Middle East Quartet to temper international concerns over the civilian cost of Israel’s campaign in Gaza.’
So according to them, they hoped Blair would help offset the condemnation from so much innocent death and destruction, well he does appear to have experience in that as a million dead Iraqis seems to evidently demonstrate. He didn’t bite though, he didn’t take the role, at least not then, even he perhaps knew there was no selling that particular brand of snake oil, but clearly he’s still been lurking around and could he be being lined up for such a role after the genocide in Gaza finally does end?
Well it’s not the only consideration Israel have given to Blair. Last December, they were reportedly tapping up Blair to head an initiative of theirs to relocate Palestinians to other countries that might consider rehoming them, so they can take over the Strip for themselves, despite forced displacement of civilians very much being a war crime. Well Blair and war crimes, it might not shock you to therefore hear that according to Israel’s Channel 12, he did meet with Netanyahu over this, went to Israel in the midst of a genocide to discuss such a thing apparently, think on that what you will, but again, he didn’t bite.
Yet now here he is involved with Biden’s peace plan and in light of that and his other apparent actions during this Gaza atrocity, you really do have to ask yourself, what is in it for Blair, because it seems that unless there is something in it for him, he doesn’t get involved. By 2014 Blair had been Middle East peace envoy for the Quartet for seven years. In all of that time he had visited Gaza just twice and Hamas were always suspicious of him because he was so close to Israeli figures. If he’s being lined up for any kind of a role involving Gaza, it will almost certainly be in Israel’s interest, more than Palestine’s and actually, if you want a particular point in his Prime Ministership to point to that could be regarded as his downfall, his refusal to condemn the atrocities Israel carried out in Lebanon in the summer of 2006, that led to the Gordon Brown soft coup, that ushered him out soon afterwards. A Labour leader incapable of challenging Israel, sound familiar?
I covered Blair’s involvement with the potential ethnic cleansing of Gaza 6 months ago in this video recommendation here if you’d care to get more details on that particular side of this story and I’ll hopefully catch you on the next vid. Cheers folks.