Blair – a man with a plan?

Tony Blair gave an interesting interview to News Night last night which you can watch here. 

Discussing the need to bring Hamas into the negotiating process, Mr Blair was asked about the parallels with Northern Ireland. He made the important and often overlooked point about our own process; that Sinn Fein had to adopt the Mitchell Principles before joining the talks.

Could such a path be open to Hamas?

With President Elect Obama now mooting the possibility of some level of contact between the US and Hamas and the Egyptians and Syrians already involved in the talks with them Mr Blair, whilst not departing from his mandate,  seemed to be suggesting that a Mitchell style set of principles could unlock a talks process.

None of this is going to happen whilst the slaughter of innocents continues and - as was the case here in Ireland - until the United States stops taking sides and uses its powers to promote peace and not war.

I make this observation with one reservation.

When SF’s leaders were handed the keys their negotiators room they saw it as an opportunity to get the keys to the leadership of the nationalist community. The process became a serendipitous one for Sinn Fein and the British and Irish governments ended up by default or design contributing to the weakening of the SDLP.

Fatah has held the line for secular Palestinian nationalism for decades and must not end up as an accidental casualty of a process designed to bring Hamas in from the cold. Mr Blair will know this and will also know how to avoid it if he has learnt from his mistakes here.

None the less, right here – right now, I would say he is a man with a possible plan and that is something we should all support.

Plenty of tactics for war, no strategy for peace

Jonathan Freeland over on Comment in Free has a good piece about the current crisis in Gaza. He quotes a senior European diplomat as saying this week’s invasion is “tactics, not strategy by the Israelis, who are expert in dealing with symptoms, not causes” . This is the act of a nation that has plenty of tactics for war – but no strategy for peace.

We had twenty five years of that mindset on this island before the serious talking started. No to sound too cliched but the old biblical maxim that an eye for an eye leaves everyone blind is as true today as it was in 300 BC and in 1980’s Ireland.

Events like these always trigger propaganda wars. In this case both parties are experts in global news management although I get the impression it is the international community and not Hamas which is more effectively countering the official Isreali position in the traditional press.

A quick O’Conall Street round up of the blogs and online TV output tells its own story. Youtube has over 800 clips posted mainly by Palestinian supporters but only a few uploaded from inside Gaza. Understandable given Israel’s control of much of the telecommunications infrastructure but a major failing in the Hamas propaganda machine none the less.

Unsurprisingly the blogosphere is also alight with debate about these events. Over 129,000 blogs have mentioned the ‘Gaza siege’ but very were few written inside the conflict zone. This is a conflict which in classic advocacy terms relies on external advocates to influence and shape opinion. The Palestinian people have many advocates around the globe but Hamas very few. It will be interesting to see if the global solidarity stays with the people of Palestine or if Israel succeeds in turning global opinion against Hamas.

In the meantime ordinary people will live and die in a 21st century hell.