Financial Times
Published: June 30 2007
Tony Blair's appointment as Middle East envoy has elicited doubts from many quarters, including parts of the peace Quartet - the European Union, the United Nations, Russia and the US - which he will be representing.
Some international players in Middle East diplomacy fear the high profile of the former UK prime minister will overshadow their own involvement. Others say his limited mandate, focused on Palestinian economic development and governance issues, prevents substantive progress on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
But Mr Blair's biggest challenge is likely to be the international policy he has been charged with promoting.
Mr Blair will no doubt bring, as the White House that championed him says, "an intensity of focus" to the Quartet. And, despite his unpopularity in the Arab world because of his policies on Iraq and Lebanon, he has a good relationship with his two main interlocutors: Ehud Olmert, Israeli prime minister, and Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority president.
But with the West Bank and Gaza now separated into two fiefdoms, a new government appointed by decree and parliament paralysed, it is not clear which Palestinian institutions he could help prepare for statehood, or how he could improve the Palestinian economy.
Mr Abbas, the only Palestinian leader Mr Blair will be allowed to deal with, has lost control of the Gaza Strip to Hamas, and his authority is confined to the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Parliament is dominated by Hamas, which beat Mr Abbas' Fatah party in the 2006 election, but was not consulted when the president sacked the national unity government.
Analysts warn that the US-driven international response to the Fatah-Hamas split risks aggravating ties between the two factions and transferring the unrest that wracked Gaza to the West Bank.
Since Mr Abbas dismissed the unity government, western powers have rushed to back him in what some analysts are referring to as a "West Bank first" strategy.
The idea appears to be to pour money and political support into the West Bank in the hope of turning it into a model of statehood that people in Gaza will want to be part of. But analysts question the viability of such a strategy, arguing that it risks exacerbating Palestinian divisions, radicalising Gaza further and eroding the credibility of Mr Abbas among his own people.
In a recently leaked confidential report, Alvaro de Soto, the former UN Middle East envoy, said the international boycott of Hamas, started after the January 2006 elections, had had devastating consequences.
His report, drafted before the latest Hamas takeover in Gaza, accused the US of exerting undue pressure to impose a one-sided pro-Israeli policy on diplomatic efforts in the region. Mr de Soto went as far as to call on Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, to consider pulling out of the Quartet.
Robert Malley, a former White House official who is director of the Middle East programme at the International Crisis Group, says the "West Bank first" policy is "a few years late and several steps removed from reality".
In a Washington Post article, co-authored with Aaron Miller, another former US official, he warns against betting on Fatah and isolating Hamas. "Since Hamas' electoral victory, US policy has helped strengthen radical forces, debilitate Palestinian institutions, undermine faith in democracy, weaken Abbas and set back the peace process. Why ask for more of the same?"
Mr Malley argues that sooner or later Mr Abbas will be forced to pursue new power-sharing arrangements between Hamas and Fatah. The US should then support a new unity government and seize the opportunity to push a comprehensiveIsraeli-Palestinian peace agreement, he says.
At a time when diplomats are again talking about turning the catastrophe of Gaza into a new opportunity, Mr Blair will be considering the experience of his predecessor, James Wolfensohn.
The former World Bank chief was appointed as envoy after the 2005 Israeli withdrawal of settlers from Gaza to lead the economic revival of the territory in what was referred to as a "Gaza first" strategy. But he resigned last year as Israel failed to honour a deal brokered by the US that would have opened Gaza to the rest of the world. Mr Wolfensohn has since said that, had the economic situation in Gaza improved, Hamas may not have won the 2006 elections.