BERLIN — I was in Europe earlier this week speaking with assorted current and former officials, experts, and diplomats about the general situation in the Middle East, when the news broke of the expected appointment of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair as special envoy of the Quartet (US, Russia, UN, EU) for Arab-Israeli peace-making. It is hard to know if this is a joke, an insult, or a possible positive new beginning.
My mixed feelings and those of many others in the Arab world are the result of years of watching both the Quartet and Blair speak lofty rhetoric, but fail to follow up with practical, even-handed deeds. If there is an award for the combined negative credibility of an institution plus an individual, the Quartet and Blair should be its first recipients. Neither of them has much to stand on in terms of a track record of accomplishments in Arab-Israeli peacemaking, and both are tainted by a legacy of lofty aims, nice rhetoric, and meager results.
Blair’s negatives in the Middle East are well known, and are not counter-balanced by his many successes at home or in Europe. His main problem is not only that he has been hypocritical or partial to Israel and the United States rather than truly even-handed; it is also that his policies have contributed directly and abundantly to the precise Arab-Israeli conflict and associated tensions in the Middle East that he is now apparently going to try and resolve. Appointing Tony Blair as special envoy for Arab-Israeli peace is something like appointing the Emperor Nero to be the chief fireman of Rome.
Blair has spoken for years about pushing for peace and two states in Palestine and Israel, yet he has repeatedly come down on the side of the Israelis in demanding that Israel’s security should be guaranteed before any progress can occur. Last summer he declined many opportunities to condemn Israel’s over-reaction in attacks against Lebanon, and instead went along with the American-driven policy of helping Israel to attack Hizbullah and all Lebanon. His speedy support of the Israeli-American boycott of Hamas after its election victory last year was impressive only for its unthinking haste.
His enthusiastic war-making in Iraq on the basis of lies and mistaken assumptions has caused immense suffering and waste in the entire region, and has badly expanded the cycle of terror and brutal counter-violence in the name of fighting terror. He has been a champion of misdiagnosis of the problem of terrorism, and has consistently offended Arabs and Muslims with his Texas-sized exaggeration and mistaken analysis of the relationships among Islam, terror and political trends in the Middle East. He has crowned this legacy of analytical and diplomatic deficiency with an absolute refusal to acknowledge that foreign policies of the US, UK, Israel and others could be contributing factors to the violence, anger and terror that plague the Middle East.
His subservience to the United States in Iraq and Palestine-Israel has been a shameless and humiliating examples of obsequious spinelessness. He repeatedly pledged himself to promote Arab-Israeli peace and to work behind the scenes to influence the United States positively in this direction — consistently without success, perhaps even without sincerity from the start.
We should view this appointment with a great deal of skepticism and with little expectation of any real progress. The institution of the Quartet and the individual Tony Blair are both limping in terms of their political legitimacy and credibility in the Middle East — but neither is beyond repair.
Blair’s own weaknesses and inconsistencies should not detract from the fact that the Quartet was a good idea when it was formed a few years ago, but it has failed because it has not been equitable and fair to both sides in the Arab-Israeli conflict. It has lacked a mechanism for applying its principles on the ground, and has tended to succumb to American policies. Europe in particular has been hurt by the exercise, finding itself increasingly perceived as having moved towards the Israeli-American position on most issues, and having largely abandoned its former posture as an impartial supporter of international legitimacy and legality as enshrined in UN resolutions.
The revival of the Quartet, behind Europe’s prodding, since last winter and the expected appointment of Blair suggest a possible opportunity for real change. This could be an opportunity for all those who wish to learn from their mistakes to do so — Arabs, Israelis and Quartet members — and to replace their past deficiencies with a more decisive and even-handed approach to peace-making that has a chance to succeed.
Yet there are no clear signs that the Quartet members seek to change their approach to Arab-Israeli issues. I suspect we are in for some huge new disappointments, as show business replaces the hard work of even-handed peacemaking, and dazzle replaces real diplomacy. I hope I am proven wrong. I am prepared to wager a fish and chips that I am not.
Rami G. Khouri is an internationally syndicated columnist, the director of the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut, editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star, and co-laureate of the 2006 Pax Christi International Peace Award.
Copyright ©2007 Rami G. Khouri / Agence Global
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Released: 27 June 2007
Word Count: 823
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