On Thursday, September 25th, Haaretz and the Times of Israel reported that a new US plan for Gaza would involve former British Prime Minister Tony Blair being placed in control of Gaza as the leader of “a temporary body.” This marks a departure from earlier plans for a post-genocide Gaza; the plan endorsed by the UN General Assembly envisions a technocratic committee and international peacekeepers from Arab states, while the now-infamous “Gaza Riviera” plan supported by the US and Israel would see the population expelled while redevelopment work is undertaken. The current plan, floated by President Trump to a group of Muslim world leaders in New York on Wednesday, was reportedly received positively, primarily due to the removal of demands for population expulsion and inclusion of international organisations.
While exact details still remain elusive, partially by design, it would see a new organisation established with a UN Security Council mandate dubbed the Gaza International Transitional Authority, or Gita, which would last for a maximum of five years. Gita would have a 7-member board, chaired by Blair, and including one Palestinian “from the business or security sector,” with the other members being from the international business or finance sectors, with “strong representation of Muslim members.” There would then be five commissioners, each handling a different aspect of governance, including legal and legislative affairs, security, reconstruction, and controversially humanitarian affairs, alongside Palestinian Authority (PA) coordination.
These final two are going to be the largest sticking points for negotiations with other Arab states, as the humanitarian affairs commissioner’s role is explicitly written to include coordination with the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which has been directly accountable for hundreds of war crimes. During ceasefire negotiations, the dismantling of the GHF has been a consistent demand of both the Hamas-led coalition and other Arab states, with the GHF’s aid sites being described as “death traps”. Reporting over the 8 months has outlined the numerous ways in which the GHF has been designed to aid in the killing of Palestinian civilians, from hiring islamophobic American biker gangs as security to the placement of aid sites to match Israeli military directives for the depopulation of North Gaza.
The question of the role of the PA, the internationally recognised government of the State of Palestine, is the other major sticking point, as while the new plan declares its intention to see Gaza returned to the jurisdiction of the PA, no timeline for this is given. It is also made to be conditional on certain reforms to be made by the PA, such as new and free elections, the last of which, held in 2007, were won by Hamas and declared illegitimate by the ruling party, Fatah, leading to the split between the West Bank and Gaza. However, there is no discussion of how these elections would be able to take place, as only 18% of the West Bank is controlled by the PA, with 60% entirely controlled by Israel, with this number expanding due to the new E1 settlement plan, which would see the West Bank split horizontally by new settlements.
It is also important to understand the perspective of the Palestinian people towards this potential future for Gaza. For many Palestinians, the idea of Westerners ruling them without their input or consent, whether it be through an international mandate or not, brings back collective memories of British colonialism. The British Mandate of Palestine, established through an international legal process with no representation of the Palestinian people, began the colonisation which laid the groundwork for eventual Zionist settlement and then partition of the country. Blair specifically is viewed as an imperialist figure, with his history of vociferous support for Western interference in the Arab world, support for Israel, and the invasion of Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein, who is viewed by many Palestinians as an anti-Zionist hero, albeit a complex one. Across the Arab world, the invasion of Iraq is often blamed for the instability which now appears endemic to the region, with the purpose of the invasion being seen as an attempt to steal the Arab world’s natural resources and defend Israel’s strategic interests.
Blair, since leaving office, has played an especially active role in Israeli and Palestinian affairs, taking a role as the head of a UN-EU-US-Russia organisation called the Office of the Quartet immediately after leaving Downing Street in 2007. For the next 8 years, Blair would work to strengthen the institutions of the PA following its turn towards dictatorship and worked to encourage foreign investment into the occupied territories in both settlements and PA-controlled areas. Following his departure from this role in 2015, Blair founded the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change with money from tech billionaires, the US State Department, and Saudi Arabia, to promote neoliberalism in the developing world and which helped develop the aforementioned “Gaza Riviera” plan. While this plan was disavowed by the Institute after public (and likely Saudi) backlash, Netanyahu has repeatedly called Blair an “old friend” and credited Blair with the success of the Abraham Accords, which saw the UAE recognise Israel. This deal was incredibly unpopular throughout the Arab world, and especially in Palestine, where it was seen as the Emirates betraying them for American money and weapons, and with Blair’s fingerprints on the deal, it certainly will not help him earn Gaza’s trust.
Whether this deal will go through or fall into the increasingly large pile of proposals that have fallen to the wayside remains to be seen, but it serves as a rare glimpse into the minds of the Western policy makers determining the future of the people of Gaza. But every day, countless more die as the genocide continues unabated, and the eyes of human beings remain fixed, but powerless.
