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Even as the Gaza peace plan unveiled yesterday by President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu left many key questions unanswered, it did clarify some long-standing questions—chiefly, what to do with Tony Blair.
The plan would establish a committee of international leaders, chaired by Trump, that would effectively govern postwar Gaza. (“Effectively,” in the previous sentence, means “in effect,” not “competently.”) While it did not formally stipulate that the actual running of Gaza would be entrusted to Blair, it’s generally believed that that committee would hand the reins to Blair, whose last major Middle Eastern initiative, back when he was the U.K.’s PM, was to send British troops to join the Americans in George W. Bush’s war in Iraq.
Trump’s plan checked virtually all of Bibi’s boxes. It gave the Israeli PM carte blanche to continue the war unless Hamas agreed to its stipulations, which called for the group’s unconditional surrender. Individual members would have to renounce violence, and the non-renouncers would be sped to other countries. At this juncture, it’s a safe guess that most Gaza residents could do very well without Hamas, thank you; but it’s by no means clear that Hamas wants to vote itself out of existence. The plan also would enable Israel to maintain a security perimeter around Gaza, and it’s studiously vague about any form of any eventual Palestinian control over, well, anything. Arab nations have tentatively supported the plan, but wanted more assurances that Israel would agree to whatever can be salvaged of a two-state solution, which is very much in doubt.
The sum of the doubts, then, greatly exceeds the sum of the possibilities that the plan will ever be implemented, which is surely what Bibi counted upon. That means that the U.S. will do nothing to restrain Israel from flattening any buildings that remain standing in Gaza, or from continuing to wage war so long as a single Hamas soldier remains standing. That, in turn, assures Bibi of the continued support of the Palestinian-exterminationist far-right parties that keep him in power and out of prison; enables Trump to say he did what he could without costing Republicans so much as a red cent from AIPAC; and gives Tony Blair, however briefly, a flash of the public spotlight.
Just in case you thought the “settlement” didn’t amount to much.
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