Blair joins the vultures feeding on a Palestinian Holocaust

Nearly 18 years have passed since Tony Blair, then Middle East envoy, presented a 34-page document that outlined a “corridor for peace and prosperity”, stretching from the Red Sea to the occupied Golan Heights.

The Blair plan envisaged an agro-industrial park near Jericho in the occupied West Bank to facilitate the transportation of goods to the Gulf via Jordan. Another industrial park, or “quick impact project”, would have been created in Tarqumiya in Hebron, and a third in Jalameh, north of Jenin. 

Little of this was new. The Oslo Accords, signed in 1993 and 1995, envisaged the creation of up to nine industrial estates along the Green Line from Jenin in the north to Rafah in Gaza.

But filled with optimism and the backing of the Palestinian Authority (PA), the United Nations, the European Union, USAID and Japan, Blair announced, like the true visionary he always knew himself to be: “If the above package works, then it will be followed by further such packages. In this way, over time and progressively, the weight of occupation can be lifted, but in a way that does not put Israel’s security at risk.”

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