The quest for peace.
Mel Stride on Tony Blair’s toughest assignment yet.
With Tony Blair’s recent appointment as a special envoy to the Middle East I thought that in this issue I would share some thoughts on the prospects and challenges he might face in his latest great endeavour. My interest in this subject was sharpened a couple of months ago when I joined a group of Conservative MPs on a Middle East fact finding mission. During a packed 4 day tour we visited the Golan Heights, the West Bank (including an inspection of the security fence), held private meetings with former Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu and with Saeb Erekat (the Chief Palestinian Negotiator). We learned first hand about some of the appalling hardships suffered by the Palestinians and we listened, in often choked silence, to the parents of the Israeli hostages being held in Gaza and Lebanon. We had a taste of the horrors and pathos of this tragic region in which innocent people on all sides have suffered and where, as in most matters political, no one has a monopoly of the truth. I returned home thinking less about who was right or wrong and more about how one might approach the task of trying to untie the metaphorical knot of this conflict and what that knot was really like (close up) and what bits needed to be slashed at and which strands more delicately teased and wiggled. And in the mind-bending complexity of it all, just where the early planks might be found. The planks on which, little by little, Mr Blair might start to construct some enduring edifice of peace.
There is no doubt that finding peace is going to be hard. We’ve been questing for it at least since 1948 and the violent birth of the Jewish state. Every decade has been punctuated by military conflict and violence. Every decade has seen a glimpse of hope and a return to conflict. This has been a complicated dynamic but as with most complex problems it does come with some useful elements of simplicity - the starting points where early attention can be rewarded. What we know is that to resolve any complex conflict you must have all the relevant parties prepared to negotiate and, in the event of an agreement being reached, they have to be able to deliver their respective sides of the deal, often against a backdrop of deep historical division. Northern Ireland (perhaps the most positive element of Mr Blair’s legacy) is a case in point. When peace was finally clinched in that often tragic province, ardent nationalism (represented by Sinn Fein) and staunch unionism (embodied by Ian Paisley) were to touch fingers across a very mighty divide indeed. A divide of mistrust and mutual recrimination that had stretched back to the days of Ulster’s plantation by James I - arguably beyond. What underpinned that achievement was that each party knew there was no alternative to a peaceful resolution. They’d tried it the other way and a bitter history had shown that it was not going to work. Also each party was in a position to deliver their respective community and once a deal was struck there was no one on either flank to pull it apart. The thump and grind of the peace negotiations had seen the democratic middle ground of the SDLP and Ulster Unionists being swept away in the process. Looking back it seems pretty clear now that no sustainable deal could ever have been struck between the centrist parties whilst there were significant others on either side of them who were ready to undermine it. 
The obvious lesson for the Arab-Israeli conflict is that we need to have all sides (and there are more than two principal players mixed up in this business) ready to engage as potential partners for peace and all sides capable of delivering on their commitments. The more parties to the process, of course, the more likely there is to be some collapse in any negotiations and this is undoubtedly a dimension which makes the Middle East situation probably more intractable than that of Northern Ireland and her ‘troubles’. 
I believe that Israel is ready for some kind of land for peace deal and that like the principal antagonists in Northern Ireland she has learned through years of painful experience that there is no absolute victory to be had – that she must compromise. Even Netanyahu holds up the extent of Jewish settlements in the West Bank as a mistake and a barrier to peace and gone now are the days of any idea of a ‘Greater Israel’ which for many Israeli’s flowed from the striking and, to some Jewish opinion, God-sent victories of the Six Day War and the territorial gains that followed. Israel stands ready to do a deal. But she needs partners for peace. 
On the Palestinian side Hamas is at the extreme of the political spectrum and appears not to be ready for any realistic engagement. It maintains a demand for the destruction of Israel which Israel not surprisingly requires to be dropped prior to any discussions. There is little sign that this condition (and a handful of others on Israel’s list) will be forthcoming any time soon. In the absence of this Israel is unlikely to revert to giving ground for nothing as it did, for example with Sharon’s withdrawal from Gaza. A policy which has apparently given her little in return and has left Sderot (a town close to Gaza) under frequent rocket attack. So here, with Hamas, lies a significant impasse. 
The approach of Israel and her allies so far has been to isolate Hamas and to foster the more moderate Fatah. Fostering and strengthening Fatah must be right but continuing to completely ignore Hamas as a potential negotiating partner would, I think, be a mistake. They are running Gaza now and despite the violence of their methods they can actually claim a democratic mandate. There are no signs that they are going to go away. In Northern Ireland it was John Major who started the early (and secret) meetings with Sinn Fein/IRA which arguably proved to be a key element in moving the extremes of Irish republicanism into a greater commitment to democracy and dialogue. What I think Blair must do is to explore how Hamas might be brought into some form of negotiation. This will be a colossal challenge and fraught with the same kind of dangers that accompanied bringing Sinn Fein/IRA into Northern Ireland’s tortuous endgame. Yet as things currently stand this would seem to be the best course to seek. This route would, no doubt, be characterised by the same kind of ‘double talk’ that facilitated the high wire act performed by Adams and Paisley as they just about kept their own people onside whilst delivering tangible concessions (most notably in the case of arms decommissioning where ambiguous language such as ‘putting weapons beyond use’ allowed each side, to some degree at least, to read into it what they wished.) 
Hamas might be brought into discussions (maybe through the conduit of Mahmoud Abbas the Fatah President of the Palestinian Authority) the aim being to facilitate at least some level of tentative Israeli-Hamas dialogue. This can probably only be facilitated by encouraging the Americans to place a friendly pressure on the Israelis (a significant challenge given Blair’s palpable lack of success in influencing Bush in the past). It will also require Hamas to start the process of moving away from its hardcore demands. 
Other necessary partners for peace include Iran and Syria both of whom are involved in sponsoring conflict through Hezbollah and Hamas. So what is the lever to hand here? In a word - Russia. Just as America can press Israel, Russia can push Iran and Syria. But securing Russia’s help will be very tricky indeed. After the humiliations of her slip in territorial influence following the end of the Cold War and recent tensions over US plans for a European missile shield plus Mr Putin’s latest clashes with the UK over the Litvinenko case Russia is becoming increasingly hostile towards the West. For Mr Blair, getting them onside is a big ask. And ironically it is as you move out from the centre of this knotty problem that you find the most obstinate strands. It is the world that is locked into the Middle East and it will be the world that will be watching as Mr Blair ventures into perhaps his toughest assignment yet. We should all wish him luck.