U.S. President Donald Trump has appointed former U.K. prime minister Tony Blair as part of his Gaza ‘board of peace.’ Here's how Blair landed on Trump’s radar and why some of his credentials make him a controversial pick.

Washington

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has been selected by Donald Trump to join a new Board of Peace, tasked with overseeing governance in post-war Gaza. Blair’s appointment is notable given his history of brokering the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland and his subsequent involvement in international diplomacy, including as a special envoy for the Quartet in the Middle East.

However, Blair’s legacy is mixed. While he is credited with successful negotiations in Northern Ireland and Kosovo, his role in the Iraq War and subsequent work in the Middle East have drawn significant criticism. Concerns have been raised about his economics-first approach and lack of consultation with Palestinian stakeholders, echoing previous criticisms from his time as Quartet envoy.

How Tony Blair ended up on Trump’s Gaza peace team

So why is Trump talking about this guy? Tony Blair, good man, very good man. In the US President's 20-point peace plan for Gaza, you won't find many names in it. Except for, yes, the former UK Prime Minister. So Trump has named Tony Blair to be part of Trump's Board of Peace. That's supposed to help oversee the governance of post-war Gaza. But what's his track record? Well, let's look back at Blair's past. I believe that today, courage has triumphed. After becoming British Prime Minister, Blair negotiated the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, which put an end to a 30-year conflict in Northern Ireland. The Good Friday Agreement is the biggest and the best thing that I think most people in Britain would agree that Tony Blair did. And the biographer I spoke to said this negotiation gave him the confidence to intervene in the Kosovo War, to remove Yugoslavian forces at the time. He also succeeded in rallying NATO to stand up to Slobodan Milosevic, who was trying to expel the Kosovo Albanians from Kosovo. Blair was very popular, but that all changed in 2003, with widespread criticism of his role in the Iraq War and former US President George W Bush's war on terror. The threat from Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction, that threat is real. That occupation and war, where many countries got involved, led to the deaths of around 200,000 Iraqi civilians. Were it not for Iraq, you would probably be remembered with affection in quite large parts of Britain. And a 2016 report found that the UK's involvement in the war was misjudged, and there was no evidence that suggested Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. For all of this, I express sorrow, regret and apology. So that widespread unpopularity led to him resigning in 2007. But after that, Blair continued his work in the Middle East, and he was named Special Envoy for Peace for the Quartet. That's the UN, US, EU and Russia. The goal of that group was to mediate an Israeli-Palestinian peace process. But Blair also set up several foundations at this time. One of them, the Tony Blair Faith Foundation. Its goal was to prevent religious conflict and extremism, and this would later become the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change. He also set up Tony Blair Associates. Tony Blair was running his own international consultancy, for which he was making a lot of money. So when it came to his work with the Quartet, this biographer says all this private business and consulting made things complicated. Nobody really knew which Tony Blair they were talking to. Were they talking to Tony Blair, the Quartet emissary? Were they talking to Tony Blair, the international consultant? Josh Poole worked for the US Security Coordination for the Palestinian Territories in 2008. Blair was spearheading an economic initiative on the theory that if you could just get the economy working, then the politics would fall into place. It's actually the other way around. If you cannot persuade Israel to lift its checkpoints, to allow for the free flow of trade and people, there is no way to get the economics off the ground. Yet Blair was so wedded to this approach that he was essentially blind to those realities, and the project failed. There was also widespread criticism from Palestinian leadership for Blair's role in the Quartet. Some said he didn't spend enough time in Gaza, and that he did little to help the Palestinian economy. Blair went on to focus on what I mentioned earlier, the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change. He is extremely well-connected, especially with a lot of the Gulf states, who are crucial to achieving anything in the Middle East. But it's Blair's connections that have also drawn criticism, including Trump's son-in-law. Kushner, of course, has for over a year now been advancing his own vision of real estate development in Gaza, and has very close ties with the government of Israel. And Poole says because the plan doesn't involve any consultation with Palestinians, it echoes Tony Blair's track record in the Quartet. What we see in the 20-point plan is, again, a very Blairite economics-first approach that fails to address the underlying political issues.

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