Air Blair to the Middle East is hardly a comfortable experience. This tour — dashing through Turkey to Egypt, the detour to Iraq, back to Israel and the West Bank — will be more bumpy (physically and politically) than is customary. Nor was there much likelihood from the outset that the Prime Minister would be able to return home in triumph. It is instead an invitation to others to portray the region as a disaster partly of his own making.
So why is he there? The roots of this trip lie in Tony Blair’s farewell address to the Labour Party conference when he promised that he would work as hard on the Middle East peace process in his remaining months in office as he had on its equivalent in Northern Ireland. It was an olive branch to his internal critics, who believed that he had mishandled the Israel-Hezbollah- Lebanon crisis of July and August.
As events have evolved, however, there would have been no point in the Prime Minister shuttling between Beirut and Jerusalem. His motive now is to build upon the insights of the Iraq Study Group, written by the “Wise Persons” of Washington — particularly their conclusion that the road to a broader solution of the conflict in the Middle East lies in an Israeli-Palestinian settlement based on the “two-state solution”.
In place of gold, frankincense and myrrh these Wise Persons are more likely to offer any Messiah gifts of waffle, fudge and Mom’s apple pie. In the ten weeks since Mr Blair declared that he would visit the Middle East it has become clear that the premise behind his mission is mistaken.
Three developments are striking. First, what was, atypically, an Israel-Hezbollah-Lebanon crisis has returned to normal — namely, a Syria-Hezbollah-Lebanon crisis with Hezbollah attempting to bring down a legitimate Government in Beirut, helped by Damascus. Secondly, the fragile Palestinian Authority has moved ever closer to civil war between Fatah and Hamas. Thirdly, what had been a contest in Iraq between a US-led “occupation” and a so-called “insurgency” has mutated into dire ethnic cleansing between Shia and Sunni Iraqis.
What should the Prime Minister and policy-makers through Europe and North America make of this anarchy? To start, they should recognise that Israel is an alibi not a cause of most of this carnage.
Hezbollah is not attempting to topple the Beirut Cabinet because of Israel but because it does not care for the Lebanese Prime Minister and his comparatively secular and technocratic team, which includes a strong Christian element. In Palestine, Fatah and Hamas are not at each other’s throats over a diplomatic strategy towards Israel but are engaged in a battle between nationalism and theocracy.
And of all the possible explanations for Shia and Sunni Iraqis slaughtering each other, we can discount the possibility that it is a dispute over Israel’s precise boundaries. What we are witnessing is a profound disagreement about the political role of Islam in the modern world and which version of Islam is the more valid.
It is clear, then, that to expect an Israeli-Palestinian settlement to somehow deliver harmony throughout the Middle East is both wildly optimistic and intellectually ludicrous. The minimum that a “two- state solution” needs for any serious negotiations to start, never mind succeed, is two states — not one state and one fratricidal non-state.
The Palestinian Authority will never be credible until the issues that are tearing it and so much of the Muslim world apart are resolved — and only then if the wiser side wins. The core of the conundrum is the absolute opposite of the analysis of the Iraq Study Group and most “conventional wisdom”. An accord between Israel and the Palestinian Authority can materialise only in the wake of a more benign Middle East, it cannot create it.
To demonstrate this, turn back to that implicit comparison in Mr Blair’s conference speech between the Middle East and Northern Ireland. The deal has yet to be fully closed in Ulster (although it should not be too far away) but life in the Province is, even without a cross-party executive at Stormont, vastly better than it was 15 years ago.
This shift did not take place because one morning Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness arose and mused to themselves: “This armed struggle business, its not going anywhere, is it?”, or because Unionists suddenly decided: “Those Catholics, they’re not all bad, come to think about it.”
External factors were crucial. One was that the collapse of the Soviet Union ended the intense debate within Irish republicanism between those who saw themselves as part of a Marxist revolutionary struggle that extended well beyond the Emerald Isle and others who viewed it solely in terms of Irish circumstances. Another was the introduction of devolution in Scotland and Wales that resolved an extensive disagreement within Unionism whether a Northern Ireland Assembly was desirable or an admission that Ulster was different from the rest of the United Kingdom.
Finally, the transformation of the Irish Republic from an economic laggard in which the priesthood exercised too much sway into a Celtic tiger and a more secular society was fundamental.
Mr Blair, like others, clings to the notion that Israel-Palestine is central to what is happening in the Middle East because it is a realm where nations such as Britain and the United States think that they enjoy influence.
In truth, he, George W. Bush, Jim Baker and Ehud Olmert are as marginal as you and I to the arguments that really count there.
Tim Hames