Blair as peacemaker in the Middle East? It could work

So now we know why Tony Blair was, slightly puzzlingly, in on that session at the White House in August about the future of postwar Gaza.

- SEAN O'GRADY

Also there with Donald Trump was the US special envoy Steve Witkoff, Trump’s son-in-law and former senior adviser for the region, Jared Kushner, who was prominent in Trump’s first term but not so much this time around. There was a parallel meeting in DC between the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, and the Israeli foreign minister, Gideon Sa'ar.

So you could see that a game was afoot, and Witkoff even admitted as much at the time: “It’s a very comprehensive plan we're putting together on the next day that I think many people are going to ... see how robust it is and how well-meaning it is, and it reflects President Trump's humanitarian motives here.”

But Blair? Tony Blair? Responsible for an illegal forever war in Iraq? What's he doing there? Having a job interview by the looks of it, to run the new “transitional authority” in Gaza, in effect a sort of Viceroy for the Gaza Strip, helping to implement a “21-point plan” that will get rid of Hamas and, in due course, rebuild the area and begin the long process of achieving the two-state solution, and just at the moment when that seems more improbable than ever.