Tony Blair Should Be on Trial for War Crimes, Not Running GazaDonald Trump wants to put the former British prime minister on a new board to manage post-war Gaza. Here’s why that’s a terrible idea.
Mehdi Hasan
Sep 30, 2025
· Paid
Blair on July 13, 2023, in London. Photo by Max Mumby/Indigo/Getty Images
There was a time when Donald Trump believed the issue of Israel and Palestine could only be solved by Jared Kushner. “If you can’t produce peace in the Middle East, nobody can,” he told his son-in-law on the eve of his first-term inauguration in 2017, before bizarrely appointing the then-36-year-old property developer to lead on the issue.
Now, nine months into his second term, Trump is pinning his hopes for peace in the Middle East on a much more experienced but even more controversial figure: 72-year-old Tony Blair.
Yes, that Tony Blair.
In his 20-point “Comprehensive Plan to End the Gaza Conflict,” released by the White House on Monday, the ninth point jumps out from the text:
“Gaza will be governed under the temporary transitional governance of a technocratic, apolitical Palestinian committee, responsible for delivering the day-to-day running of public services and municipalities for the people in Gaza. This committee will be made up of qualified Palestinians and international experts, with oversight and supervision by a new international transitional body, the “Board of Peace,” which will be headed and chaired by President Donald J. Trump, with other members and heads of State to be announced, including Former Prime Minister Tony Blair.”
Sorry, what? Putting Tony Blair in charge of any kind of peace effort in the Middle East is like making the arsonist the head firefighter; the burglar the chief detective.
This is the man who allied with George W. Bush to illegally invade and occupy Iraq – a war that led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Arabs, ripped an entire Middle Eastern country apart, and unleashed extremism and terrorism across the region. Remember: Blair didn’t just support Bush’s invasion back in 2002 and 2003. He was its chief promoter outside of the United States, enthusiastically peddling lies about weapons of mass destruction while cynically ignoring mass protests on the streets of the UK. He has never apologized for Iraq.
Then there is Blair’s record on Israel and Palestine itself, which should also disqualify him from this proposed “Board of Peace.” As the envoy to the Middle East for the so-called “Quartet,” a group comprising the US, the UN, the EU, and Russia, between 2007 and 2015, the former British prime minister achieved… basically nothing. Zero. Zilch. Nada. Palestinian officials called him “useless, useless, useless.” Even friendly Western diplomats concluded he was “ineffective” in the job and had “no credibility in this part of the world.”
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By the time he quit his Quartet role, the Israeli settler population in the Occupied Palestinian Territories had increased by more than 100,000. Blair’s bank balance increased too, with the former PM rather conveniently launching a consulting career at the same time as he became envoy to the Middle East. The Financial Times reported in 2015 that his “corporate roster has included PetroSaudi, an oil company with links to the Saudi royal family, JPMorgan and Mubadala, an Abu Dhabi wealth fund.”
Blair spent his time as Quartet envoy not just cashing checks from authoritarian regimes in the region, but pushing pro-Israel talking points. “When it comes to security, I am 100% on Israel’s side,” he said in 2010. He even gave a eulogy at former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s funeral in 2014. And, in terms of actual negotiations, as senior Palestinian official Nabil Shaath said when he resigned in 2015, Blair “never proposed anything that the Israelis didn’t agree to.”
On Monday, even the Washington Post noted Blair’s “warm” relations with Benjamin Netanyahu and quoted an Israeli official as saying: “The Israelis really like Tony Blair.”
So this is the man whom Palestinians should now trust to oversee the rebuilding of Gaza? As well as their own eventual liberation from Israeli occupation? Really?
Netanyahu shakes hands with Blair, who was the envoy of the Quartet to the Middle East at the time, on Feb. 4, 2011, in Jerusalem. Photo by Moshe Milner/Israel’s GPO via Getty Images
Blair’s record on the Middle East is one of repeated failures, brazen bias, and mass slaughter. Why on Earth should the bombed and besieged Palestinians of Gaza have their fate decided by a man already drenched in Arab blood?
Blair’s arrogance, hawkishness, and deference to Israel also symbolize everything that is wrong with the West’s approach to the Middle East. Whether it was Arthur Balfour’s support for Zionism in 1917, or Tony Blair’s support for genocide in 2025, the truth is we need less British colonialism and more Palestinian self-determination. Handing Gaza over to a new British viceroy, to Blair of all people, would be yet another provocative chapter in the long book of injustices imposed on the Palestinian people.
The international community should be holding Blair to account for one of the worst crimes of the 21st century – the illegal and catastrophic attack on Iraq – not gifting him with another high-profile gig in the Middle East. The former British prime minister should be headed to The Hague, not Gaza.
The people of that blockaded strip have endured two years of genocide, famine, and ethnic cleansing. Their suffering continues, day after day, massacre after massacre.
You think they want Tony Blair to save them? No, they want their freedom.
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What did shrub do to him? It's lasted well beyond 2009. |
