Blair urges White House to shift focus to Israel-Palestine conflict

So Blair has made the speech that was hinted at yesterday.

He has called for a solution to the Israeli-Palestine question as a necessity to solving the problems of the Middle East, including Iraq. But he's gone further:

He also urged Syria, and to a lesser extent Iran, to choose whether they wished to join the dialogue and become partners in a wider Middle East peace.

Mr Blair, famously cautious about pressing the Republican administration in public, is trying to seize the rare indecision in Washington in response to the Democrat victories to persuade the White House to acknowledge the central importance of the Palestinian peace process.

He will repeat the message when he gives video evidence today to the Iraq Study Group in Washington, the bipartisan panel seen as the vehicle by which George Bush could rethink his Iraq strategy. Mr Blair is working towards a regional Middle East peace conference, but many of his advisers question whether Mr Bush has the political will to make a renewed effort on Palestine.

Mr Blair argued last night that coalition forces would be able to leave Iraq within 18 months. In his speech at the Guildhall, he said: "A major part of the answer to Iraq lies not in Iraq itself, but outside it, in the whole region where the same forces are at work, where the extremism flourishes with a propaganda that may be - indeed is - totally false, but is none the less attractive to much of the Arab street."

There are those of us, myself included, who think sorting out the Israel/Palestine issue would have been a much more productive solution to international terrorism than invading Iraq, although I well remember Bush's hints - backed by Blair - that a solution to Israel-Palestine could only be addressed through the removal of Saddam. The implication being that Saddam was so much of a threat that the Israelis would not be able to consider any radical proposals until he had been taken care of.

Fast forward three years later and we witness Blair making the same case people like myself were making three years ago and if we cast our eyes to Washington there sits Bush - with Olmert at his side - virtually ignoring him.

Saddam is gone from power, about to be hung from the neck until he is dead. Israel has been given the carrot she demanded before she could institute "radical change" regarding the Palestinian question. The problem now is that, post the Israeli-Lebanon conflict, there is no mood for such change within Israel and we find ourselves where we always seem to find ourselves regarding the Israeli-Palestine dispute. Israel would really love to make a move, she seriously wants peace, but sadly, again, she is unable to grasp it.

This story has been stuttering along, in various forms, for the last thirty nine years. And all the while, Israel continues to build illegally on Palestinian land.

As I said yesterday, Blair must be on crack if he thinks they are going to pay the slightest attention to what he has to say regarding this. In Bush's government, Olmert has found an American administration even more rabidly pro-Israeli than previous American administrations. And let's face it, there has never been any American administration that you could seriously chide for being too fair towards the Palestinians.

So Blair is right in what he says. I suspect that Bush might even have an inkling that Blair is right.

But nothing will happen. There is simply no stomach in the US for taking on AIPAC and the other pro-Israeli groups that command such respect and influence on Capitol Hill.

It also says a lot about how serious Bush and his cohorts are about tackling the problem of terrorism. If they were genuine, they would be interested in tackling it's root causes, of which the Israeli-Palestine question is undeniably central.

But they are not. They are interested in invading Iraq, Iran and Syria and any other nation that might hinder Israel's ambitions to be a regional superpower, but they are entirely silent when it comes to the conflict that has caused so much tension in the region.

Blair is right, but no-one is listening.

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