Examination of Witnesses (Questions 220-239)
THE RT
HON TONY
BLAIR
1 JUNE 2009
Q220 Sir John Stanley: Might not
some people say that that would be evidence of a genuine commitment
by yourself and the Quartet to a viable Palestinian state, instead
of just rhetoric?
Mr. Blair: No, because they would
regard it, in a sense, as somewhat rhetorical until other issues
are dealt with. If you ask what single most important thing would
give people hope for the future, it is, in my view, the three
aspects that I have talked about: first, a credible path to a
political settlement, with a time schedule; secondly, major change
on the West Bank that allows Palestinians to believe they will
have the run of their territory, but in a way that also protects
the security of Israel; and, thirdly, a new policy and strategy
for Gaza that helps the people and isolates the extremists. If
we manage to achieve those things over the next few months, and
I think that it is possible to do so, that is what will restore
credibility. But, if you go into the mechanics of how you link
Gaza up to the West Bank at this point in time—I am not
saying that it is not a very important issue for later—I
think people would regard it as a little unrealistic.
Q221 Chairman: Can I take it,
from what you just said, that the proposals that we were shown
in 2005, which Jim Wolfensohn worked up—all those detailed
proposals about economic connections, transport links and so on—are
not dead?
Mr. Blair: No, they are not dead
at all.
Q222 Chairman: You have got that
work there, ready to activate at some point soon?
Mr. Blair: Absolutely, but while
you are still trying to get the basic materials in to replace
the electricity and sewerage system, if you start talking to Gazans
about how they link up with the West Bank, they will look at you
as if you are a bit strange.
Chairman: That is helpful. We are going
to have to move on.
Q223 Sir Menzies Campbell: I have
just one question. If you wish to visit Gaza, or to have businessmen
from Gaza come to visit you, do you have the wholehearted co-operation
of the Administration in Gaza and the Israeli Government?
Mr. Blair: We certainly strive
for that optimal situation, yes. The difficulties are fairly obvious
from all ways around, and that is why I do not try to delve too
much into the detail of it. However, as I have said, I regard
my mandate as covering Gaza as well as the West Bank—indeed,
it does—and my desire and objective is to make sure that
we are there on the spot as well as seeing people outside. Of
course, you need a lot of co-operation from people to do that.
Sir Menzies Campbell: That was a very
diplomatic answer, if I may say so.
Mr. Blair: It is probably the
most sensible thing to say, just at this moment.
Q224 Chairman: May I take you
back to your remarks to Sandra Osborne and Malcolm Moss about
Hamas? You will be aware that our Committee made recommendations
in 2007 that, in addition to you having a much wider role than
your mandate, the Quartet should find ways to engage with Hamas
in order to bring it to the Quartet principles. You have said
that Egypt is doing the job, but frankly, Egypt has not yet succeeded
in building unity between Fatah and Hamas, or achieving agreement
on the way forward. Do you think that Egypt could be assisted
by representatives of the Quartet being more proactive? Not necessarily
yourself. Should the Quartet find some way to engage with Hamas?
Mr. Blair: First off, the Egyptians
understand the situation and, in my view, do an excellent job
with a great deal of commitment. Secondly, the issue is not engaging
with Hamas per se, but finding common ground—that is the
difficulty. You obviously have issues around the existence of
the state of Israel—recognition of its existence and so
on—but the most fundamental and difficult thing is whether
there is a unified Palestinian position, in the sense that everybody
accepts that the objective of a two-state solution is to be pursued
through peaceful negotiation. If they do not agree with that,
it is difficult to see how they can take the thing forward.
There will be a continuing debate about whether
the Quartet principles are correct. The new Administration in
America has very firmly reasserted them, as you know. Those are
the principles by which I work. I repeat: people would prefer
a situation in which Hamas are inside the process, rather than
outside it. The Quartet principles are not abstract, but are there
for a genuine and specific purpose, which is to ensure that there
is the basis for an agreement for people to find a way forward
together.
Q225 Chairman: On the question
of economic development, you have your own very clear approach.
Given the change in politics in Israel and the statements by Prime
Minister Netanyahu about giving priority to what he called an
"economic peace", do you think that your approach differs
from his or can you find a way for the two to work together?
Mr. Blair: There is a way that
they can work together, obviously, which is that you say, "We
are in favour of an economic peace but there has to be political
peace as well."
Q226 Chairman: But Prime Minister
Netanyahu is not talking about the political peace, is he?
Mr. Blair: Sometimes he will talk
about three aspects of it: politics, security and economics. Working
on this economic part, I have found it extremely challenging and
difficult at points to get things done, so if an Israeli Prime
Minister or Government say, "We want to drive this economic
stuff forward", my attitude is, "Great. It is not a
substitute for the rest but let's do it none the less." I
do not think that we should hold back on it. My interaction with
the Israeli Prime Minister at the moment is, however, about saying
that you will not get the economy on the West Bank going unless
the other issues are dealt with.
You immediately bump up against the security
question when you start talking about the economic question. The
industrial parks can be built. If you look at the larger map,
you will see the Jenin industrial estate in the north, which is
pretty much ready to go, although there are a few aspects that
need to be dealt with. There is also the Jericho agro-industrial
park, which the Japanese are leading on and which will provide
thousands of jobs, but there are issues that have to be resolved.
Further down is the Tarqumiyah industrial estate near Hebron,
and there is one that the French principally are engaged in near
Bethlehem. All of those are fine but it will take some time—a
process evolving over years—to get the industrial estates
fully up and functioning. In the meantime, the key is to revive
trade between Arab-Israelis and Jenin; between Jenin and Nablus;
Nablus and Ramallah; Ramallah and Bethlehem; and down to Hebron.
If you do not deal with the access and movement issues, the ability
to revive the economy quickly will be limited. Likewise, in and
around Jericho and by the River Jordan there are fantastic tourist
opportunities. It is potentially one of the great tourism places
in the whole world. On the Jordanian side, the King of Jordan
has very imaginatively and courageously allowed Christian baptism
sites along the banks of the River Jordan. It is an amazing thing,
as you can now go down to the Jordanian side and see different
denominations of Christianity building churches there, and there
is huge potential. I recently visited a couple of tourist sites
around Jericho, the oldest city in the world. One site that the
Palestinians are able to develop is, I think, an eighth-century
palace, and one that they are unable to develop is King Herod's
palace from the ancient days, which obviously has huge potential
for tourism, but because it is in Area C they cannot agree a development,
so it is not developed.
If you look again at the map, you will see the
Dead Sea, and if you have been down there on the Jordanian side
you will have seen a string of extremely profitable hotels, but
on the Palestinian side access to the Dead Sea is restricted.
If you wanted to develop that, it would be an enormous thing.
My point is very simple: you will not get that economic development
from just a few major industrial projects, important though they
are—and they are important. You need to deal with these
other issues if you are to get the economy moving properly.
Q227 Mr. Horam: As you said, it
is no good just having isolated industrial and economic units:
you must have access and movement between them, but how do you
achieve that? Can you do something about that now by building
up the strength of the Palestinian Authority?
Mr. Blair: Yes, that is exactly
what we should do. The plan we have was, in a sense, really developed
by myself and General Jones when he was working under the previous
American Administration—he is now the national security
adviser to President Obama. Out in the Palestinian Territories,
we worked out a paradigm whereby you train and expand the Palestinian
security capacity.
Q228 Mr. Horam: Does that mean
the police force?
Mr. Blair: Yes, and the security
forces. There are security forces that are heavily armed.
Q229 Mr. Horam: Palestinian forces?
Mr. Blair: Yes, Palestinian forces.
Q230 Mr. Horam: They are not the
army, but still security?
Mr. Blair: They are security,
but they are more like an armed force. Then there are the civil
police. Those forces were trained in Jordan by the Americans,
then deployed on the West Bank. As a result, certain changes have
been made. If you look at the large map, you will see that around
the Jenin area, there are not a great number of road blocks—I
think there is only one in that area, although there are more
to the east and west. The Palestinians have far greater control
there now, and that is obviously allowing Jenin to operate in
a more regular way.
Q231 Mr. Horam: How does that
deal with the Israelis' understandable fears about security, because
they might feel that that will be exploited by some extremist
groups?
Mr. Blair: Sure, so we also get
the Israeli and Palestinian commanders to sit down together and
have early-warning systems between them. Incidentally, people
on both the Israeli and Palestinian sides will tell you that that
co-operation is a lot better than it was. You also need to build
the prison capacity. For example, in Jenin, we have just built
a new courthouse, which I think is now opening.
Q232 Mr. Horam: And also the police?
Mr. Blair: The civil police are
being trained by the Europeans in what is called the EUPOL COPPS
programme.
Q233 Mr. Horam: That is interesting,
because we have just come back from Afghanistan, as you know,
and one of the really big problems there is the training of police,
because there simply are not enough policemen in Europe to send
to Afghanistan as well as to do this sort of thing. There is a
real bottleneck there.
Mr. Blair: Yes, absolutely. The
EUPOL COPPS people have obviously drawn a lot from the experience
of Northern Ireland as well. There is one thing you will notice
in certain Palestinian areas, and even down in Hebron. A few years
back, when I first got there, I could not have gone to Jenin or
Nablus very easily at all, but I am now there regularly. There
were militia gangs, and people would walk around the streets with
guns and so on. It was lawless for the Palestinians. If you talk
to Prime Minister Fayyad, he will say, "The reason I want
security is not for the Israelis but for the Palestinians. I may
want it for the Israelis, too, for political reasons, but ordinary
Palestinians have to feel safer." In the most recent polling
on the Palestinian side, the area where they have noticed the
most improvement is security.[1]
You are right: the way to do this is slowly. That is why I say
that the bottom-up approach is essential to dealing with this.
You have to have a properly functioning security capacity on the
part of the Palestinians, to provide the Israelis with justification
for stepping back. The basic idea is that as the Palestinians
do more and the Israelis do less, eventually you have the Palestinians
back in charge of their territory.
Chairman: We need to move on.
Q234 Mr. Purchase: Briefly, it
is to press you again, if I may, on the humanitarian question
and human relations. We have mentioned the difficulties for individuals.
I know that you are aware of what goes on at the checkpoints,
for instance. Sometimes the soldiers insist that goods—vegetables,
fruits, household provisions—are unloaded. They are left
in the sun all day and ruined. That is a dreadful thing to happen
to a small trader who is trying to move within his own country
essential items that are needed every day. Telecommunications
operators with proper licences find that, in the occupied settlements,
things are being done freehand, with no licence fees paid. Farmers
are cut off from their own land.
Those are basic economic functions of any society.
Please, Mr. Blair, can you look at those issues carefully, and
use any negotiations and any influence that you can bring to bear
to improve the basic standards of human treatment one to another?
Mr. Blair: Sure, that is precisely
what we are trying to do. Again, just to give a specific example,
if you go back to the large map and look in and around the space
to the east, between Jenin and Nablus, very often Palestinian
farmers cannot get through the checkpoint properly to their own
land. Given that it is out toward the east—
Mr. Purchase: They may seem little things
in the great scheme of things, but they are so important.
Mr. Blair: They are, absolutely.
That is one of the very negotiations we are engaged in at the
moment.
Q235 Sir John Stanley: You spoke
about the benefit of industrial estates in the West Bank. Could
I suggest that, as and when you manage to put together your visit
to Gaza, you go to the huge former industrial estate north of
Gaza City—between Gaza City and the border—that we
went to? I say "former" because that huge industrial
estate was razed to the ground. It was not just partly destroyed;
it is not that a few buildings were damaged. There is not a single
building left, and the employment opportunity for every single
person who worked there was destroyed. Have you received any explanation
or justification from the Israelis for that wanton destruction
of the economic life of Palestinians in Gaza, whether on the industrial
side or in respect of crop production?
Mr. Blair: That particular industrial
estate is not the only one in Gaza that was razed to the ground.
It is an indication of exactly what the problem is, because the
businesses were, for the main part, legitimate. The discussion
that we are having at the moment is about how we get material
in to allow reconstruction and to allow the legitimate businesses
to start not merely manufacturing goods there, but exporting them.
This goes back to the same thing: how do we deal with Gaza in
a way that, as I said, helps the people and isolates the extremists,
rather than the other way around?
Q236 Sir John Stanley: You acknowledge
that there was no military justification—that the action
was simply punishment of civilians.
Mr. Blair: Look, as I said to
people at the time over Gaza, when you look at the numbers of
people who have died, in particular the young children, there
is no concept of proportionality in this.
Q237 Mr. Illsley: May I come back
to an issue that you touched on in response to a question from
the Chairman, which was about engagement with Hamas? You mentioned
that, obviously, there is at the moment no basis of common ground
for any engagement with Hamas in terms of the Quartet's principles.
Is there any sign that Hamas is moving towards the Quartet's principles?
Also, is there any possibility that the Quartet might relax their
standpoint in relation to getting some engagement with Hamas in
terms of negotiations? I know that you said that negotiation is
currently being done by the Egyptians, but is there any possibility
of a direct communication or contact with Hamas?
Mr. Blair: As I say, I will not
go into or speculate on who the different people are who contact
Hamas. However, I think that there is probably quite a large amount
of communication that goes on. The first question that you raised
was this: is Hamas prepared to make a change? I honestly do not
know is the answer to that. I think that there are people within
Hamas who must see the—look, if you take the issue to do
with rockets, as I have said before Hamas has recently indicated
that not only will it not fire rockets itself but it will actively
try to prevent other people from doing so. I welcome that.
Here is the thing, and this is why this issue
is both very complex at one level, and also extraordinarily simple
at another level. If there was a definitive change of mind on
behalf of all those people engaged in Palestinian politics that
they would embrace peaceful resistance, if you like, and go down
the Gandhi route, saying, "We are in a state of resistance,
because of the occupation, but we are going to employ simply peaceful
means," it would totally change the dynamic of the situation
overnight and change it in a way that would mean that the international
community would be completely emboldened and empowered, I think,
to take this process forward quickly.
The position of those people on the Israeli
side who reject the two-state solution—as I have said, I
believe that they are in a minority on the Israeli side—is
helped when there are extremists on the Palestinian side who fire
rockets at innocent civilians. So it is a classic situation really,
where the question is this: can the sensible people who want peace
find a sufficiently strong momentum so that the other people get
pushed to one side? Is Hamas prepared to do that? I do not know—it
does not seem like it.
Q238 Mr. Illsley: Are you privy to
any of the conversations or negotiations that are taking place
between Hamas and the other players within the region? Also, do
you have any reasons for optimism as a result of those negotiations?
Mr. Blair: Yes. I talk to the
people who talk to Hamas regularly; I talk to the Egyptians and
I talk to other people who talk to Hamas. That is why I say that
it is not a case of not understanding what each other is saying.
Part of the other issue—and we found this
in Northern Ireland, too—is that at certain points in a
peace process ambiguity can be creative and helpful; it is just
one of the ways that is creative and helpful as you try to move
forwards. At certain other periods, however, ambiguity is actually
really unhelpful. Sometimes people will phone me up and say, "Look,
you should look at what the Hamas leadership has said," and
they point to certain phrases that indicate a movement towards
peace. Then there are a whole lot of other phrases that, if you
have a PhD in studying these things, you can probably work out
what they are trying to say, but if you are just an ordinary person
looking at it, you would say, "Well, I don't know what they
are saying."
One of the things that I think Hamas has to
realise is that if it wants to become part of this process, it
must stop being ambiguous about it. It is a simple question: are
you prepared to say that you will do this through peaceful negotiation,
or not? Now, if you give a kind of "yes, but" answer
to that question, it is not really any good. That is part of the
problem. It is like when Hamas talks about two states and it says
that it will give you a very long truce. Well, if someone gives
you a very long truce, that is not quite the same as saying, "We
recognise that we are going to be in partnership with one another."
Now, you understand where Hamas is trying to
get to maybe, but the "maybe" is the problem. That is
why I think that there is a real issue. I know that the Egyptians
are trying to explain to Hamas that, if it wants to be part of
this process, the door is genuinely open. We cannot be clearer
than that. However, that can only be on a basis that allows people
to move forward with confidence. Otherwise, unsurprisingly the
Israelis will say, "You want us to sit down with these people,
but they are not even prepared to say they accept that we should
exist."
Q239 Mr. Illsley: The Committee was
in Gaza in 2005 before the elections that brought Hamas into Government.
That election caused many of the problems we now face. Will the
Quartet do anything, say anything or make a statement prior to
the 2010 elections on how it would deal with the re-election of
Hamas or with Hamas still being part of a Government in Gaza?
Mr. Blair: I do not think that
we, as a Quartet, would try to insert ourselves into that process.
I think that at some point there will be an election on the Palestinian
side. All our efforts should be geared towards ensuring that by
the time we get to the election, a serious and credible path of
political progress is being taken. There would then be a better
chance for people who want the peaceful solution to succeed.
Chairman: We have very few minutes left.
Fabian.
1 Note by witness: For further information see
Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research at www.pcpsr.org Back
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