Tony Blair: The Politics of Failure Have Failed, We Must Make Them Work Again

Why do birds suddenly appear

Every time you are near?

Just like me, they long to be

Close to you



Meet Tony Blair, former Prime Minister, current envoy smiling derangedly at Olmert and holding hands with him. Tony can solve all of our problems by cheerfully telling us it's all in our heads and we really need to have faith.

Middle East envoy Tony Blair on Sunday urged Israel to make a "psychological shift" from indifference and skepticism about the prospects of progress with the Palestinians to an active determination to "make it happen on the right terms."

What exactly is a psychological shift? Some sort of mental nightgown? A psychosomatic robe?

Being skeptical about the prospects of a negotiated peace with Palestinian terrorists isn't a psychological block. It's simply common sense and a matter of learning from history. If anyone has a psychological problem, it's anyone who insists that we shouldn't be skeptical about the prospects of peace.

He said Israel, which turns 60 in May, would "absolutely" still be here in another 60 years, but that "to guarantee its long-term security I believe it needs a viable Palestinian state."

So now we've got to make a Palestinian state now in order to get long term security for a 100 or 200 years from now? By and by we'll all be eating pie in the cafes of Ramallah. The reasoning here seems to be that Israel should disregard its security for the next 60 years because Tony Blair assures us we aren't going anywhere in that time, and as a former Prime Minister of another country he's entirely capable of making that hollow assurance, to get really really long term security. Like maybe for the next 1000 years. Bollocks, as his countrymen say.

Blair told The Jerusalem Post, then "the psychological shift that has to happen in the Israeli thinking is to move from saying, 'Well, if it happens, it happens, but frankly I'm skeptical about the whole thing,' to saying, 'Okay, I'm going to try and make it happen.'"

All-right then, I'm pretty certain that I can't flap my wings and fly, I've been frankly skeptical about the whole thing, but Okay, I'm going to jump off a building and try to make it happen. It's the psychological shift thing which allows me to ignore such irrelevant things as gravity and common sense and the long history of what happens when people jump off buildings. Wish me luck.

It was "not impossible" for the Palestinians to transform themselves into the kind of "stable partner for Israel" that Jordan constitutes, he said

Let's have some percentage odds on it, are we talking "not impossible" relative to say the sun exploding next week or "not impossible" relative to the New York Mets winning next year's world series?

All I say to Israelis," he went on, "is, well, put it to the test... What is the alternative?" Blair said

The alternative? Let's see sanity? Recognizing the futility of repeating an action over and over again and expecting different consequences? Tony Blair sounds like the teenager wheedling you, "Come on guys, let's do it, what's the worst that could happen?"

Look around Israel? Hamas is running Gaza and Israeli towns are being shelled from inside Israel's borders. Tens of thousands of armed terrorists are operating inside Israel. Awww but come on guys, it'll be fun. You surrender more stuff to them and they'll promise to be nice to you this time.

Nonetheless, he went on, "the danger in this situation, if I can be very blunt about it, is that you say 'There have been 60 years of failure of negotiation and therefore it's always going to fail,' whereas actually sometimes things aren't like that.

The politics of failure have failed. We must make them work again.

Stop assuming that 60 years of failure means anything. Stop learning from history. Do a psychological shift, put on a mental nightgown and Tony Blair's rosy lenses and go in there and concede some more!

And to be fair to this Palestinian leadership, as I keep emphasizing, they're living with the legacy of a certain type of politics and you don't escape from that immediately."

So shouldn't we wait until they escape that "certain type of politics" (BOOM) until we negotiate with them?

In my view the Palestinians are prepared to be realistic, sensible and focused in agreeing those terms in the final status negotiations."

Yes, they realistically expect Israel to give them territory which they will sensibly use to keep attacking Israel in a very focused way.