Those complicit in the killings planning Palestinians' future

Last week's White House meeting to discuss a postwar plan for Gaza was unlikely to reassure Palestinians and Arabs who were not invited.

- Michael Jansen, Political Correspondent

The meeting was attended by ex-British Prime Minister Tony Blair, former presidential adviser Jared Kushner, envoy Steve Witkoff, and, unexpectedly at the end, Israeli prime ministerial aide Ron Dermer. This is hardly the personnel to devise a plan for Gaza’s governance and reconstruction. Instead the meeting was part of a neo-colonial effort to dictate terms to Palestinians in both Gaza and the West Bank.

Blair is, of course, the most high-profile appointee whose presence lends false credibility to postwar Gaza planning by Westerners. Blair’s regional record has not been positive. While in office from 1997-2007, Blair joined US President George W. Bush to wage a deadly and disastrous war on Iraq in 2003 with the aim of toppling that country’s president Saddam Hussein as he was seen as an obstacle to regional peace with Israel. An estimated one million people died in Iraq during and as a result of the war which spawned Daesh and another war between 2014-2019 that involved the US and its Western allies. Daesh fugitives continue to roam the desert in western Iraq and eastern Syria. International law experts say Blair should be prosecuted for war crimes. To court the Arabs after the Iraq war debacle, Blair urged the Quartet - made up of the US, UN, EU, and Russia - to issue by the end of 2005 a roadmap for the emergence of a Palestinian state. Blair would have known that this initiative would come to nothing due to the special relationship the US has with Israel. In 2005 Blair endorsed the US-Israeli understanding which said under a deal for Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank, major Israeli settlement blocs housing 93,000 would remain in place although they are illegal under international law.