Blair snubbed by Europe's Middle East initiative

Tony Blair has made no secret of the fact that he would like an Israeli-Palestine peace initiative to be the main thrust of his remaining time in office.

However, there are many of us who have always thought that his preponderance to adopt the US foreign policy line and the recent war in Iraq have left him spectacularly unfit for the role into which he now seeks to fit himself.

It now appears that this is also how he is viewed by the rest of the Europeans. France, Italy and Spain have announced a new proposal for a Middle East peace settlement and it is quite obvious that Downing Street were not even consulted on the subject.

Asked if the Prime Minister was aware of it, his spokesman replied laconically: "We will wait and see."

It says an awful lot about how Europeans view Blair - and his possible relevance - that they would not even ask his opinion on a subject that he has publicly identified as the major thrust of his remaining time in office.

At the core of the plan - to be put to next month's EU summit - is an immediate ceasefire with an international mission to monitor it in Gaza; a boost for efforts already under way to form a new "national unity" Palestinian government that can earn international recognition; prisoner exchanges to release the three soldiers whose abduction sparked war in Lebanon and fighting in Gaza this summer; and talks between Israel and the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

And in a refreshing change from the way the US usually conduct such negotiations:

The Israeli government also said the ideas "were not co-ordinated with us."

Palestinian negotiators have long complained that any American proposals are first "co-ordinated" with the Israelis, meaning that Israel controls the agenda before negotiations even begin.

Europe have normally been united with Russia and China when it comes to the subject of the Middle East and Blair has recently been well out of step with the European position, especially when he failed to call for a ceasefire during the Israeli war with Hizbullah and, more recently, when the Foreign Secretary, Margaret Beckett, watered down a statement that would have condemned Israel for the killing of 19 civilians in Gaza last week. Britain's isolation was completed when she abstained on Saturday night on a resolution criticising Israel at the United Nations.

Chirac has sent a clear message of what he thinks of the UK's position on this matter:

"Our three countries (France, Italy and Spain) have the sensitivity, the same interests and the same morals, and maybe we can play a part in working out a solution to the Palestinian problem."

It is hard not to get the distinct feeling that Chirac is accusing the British position as being one that lacks morality.

This is the inevitable consequence of Blair adopting what is, in essence, the neo-con one sided view of the Israeli-Palestine dispute. It is a view in which we are encouraged to see the violence as "tit for tat", and the cause of the violence - the illegal military occupation - is removed from the equation or deemed to be an irrelevance.

When one adopts such a position, as Blair has, one should not be surprised when others decide that you are part of the problem rather than part of the solution.

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tag: Israel, Palestine, US foreign policy, pro-Israeli lobby, Blair, EU, European Union,