By: David Horovitz – The Jerusalem Post

Early in his interview with The Jerusalem Post last Thursday, the international Quartet’s envoy Tony Blair observed that “you’d be nuts if you were naively optimistic” regarding the chances of a peacemaking breakthrough “after all we’ve been through over the years.”

But he then proceeded to sound at least cautiously optimistic about the prospects of precisely such progress on the Israeli-Palestinian front. The new American government was committed from the get-go. Israel had a stable coalition sensibly determined to work “bottom up” as well as “top down.” Moves were ongoing to improve the Palestinian economy and security capacity. The ideological gulfs were bridgeable. And Hamas had some hard choices to make.

As he said, given “all we’ve been through over the years,” such assessments might sound risibly rosy. But Blair does have his feet on the ground: The central characteristic of his mission has been to concentrate on detail – the advocacy of specific projects to improve day-to-day life in the West Bank, the focus on specific Israeli security concerns.

Now, he insisted, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu “certainly can play the role of peacemaker.” And the Palestinians were ready “to push ahead on security and capacity.”

Why might the current constellation of players succeed where Annapolis had failed? Because the region was changing, he said, and the choice, given the rise of Iran, was getting starker – the choice, as he put it, between modernizing or living in the past. The way Blair sees it, we’ve reached “the moment of truth.”

Excerpts:

We have a new government here and we’re hearing about a determination to build from the bottom up with the Palestinians, including assurances that economic projects that had been stymied will now be advanced. There’s also a new American presidency that is trying to invigorate the process, and talk of possible new Arab League thinking – though it’s not clear how true that is. In contrast to Annapolis, which did not lead to any breakthrough, do you have the sense that there is genuinely a chance now of something substantial changing for the better?

The short answer is yes, I do. You’d be nuts if you were naively optimistic after all we’ve been through over the years. But I do think this is a moment of opportunity. A moment of truth. After many months of semi-paralysis, frankly, for all sorts of reasons, we now have a new American administration that, from the outset, is determined to focus on [this]. We’ve got a new Israeli government that, at least for the time being, is secure with an empowered prime minister. And I think the Palestinian side of the politics are a little clearer too, in a way.

There is a consensus that you have to build from the bottom up as well as negotiate from the top down. That is absolutely the right thing.

It’s also a moment of decision because once you take the three “headings” – politics, economics and security – you have to put substance into that… Each of these things take decisions… Over the next few months it will become apparent, one way or another, whether the Israelis are really prepared to build from the bottom up, and whether the Palestinians are really prepared to understand that the only state that Israel will tolerate as a Palestinian state is one that is a stable and secure neighbor, and that requires, obviously, decision-making on their part too.

I don’t know what will come out of the next few weeks, but it seems to me that people are reflecting from the beginning on their policy… I’m confident that people will take the decisions with the right will and intention, that we can move it forward.

What do you see as having become clearer on the Palestinian side?

For the moment, at any rate, people are going to carry on working with Prime Minister Fayad… I feel the Palestinians themselves are ready now to push ahead on security and capacity. There is a whole set of proposals now on the rule of law for the Palestinians, supported by various parts of the donor community, for things like courts and prisons and the judiciary and the prosecution service and so on, along with further training with [US] Gen. Dayton of the [PA] security forces. So all that is moving along.

People are saying to Hamas, “You’ve got a decision to make.” If you want to change and get on board with a two-state solution, that’s your decision. If you decide that you won’t, that’s also your decision, but we want to move ahead. I see the next few weeks as when we try and devise a framework that then takes us forward at least to the end of the year.

I don’t see the faintest prospect that Hamas is going to accept Israel. Therefore, what’s going to happen to Gaza in this kind of framework?

It can’t be put to one side. We’ve got to do what we can to help the people there. I am sure from all the contacts I have in Gaza – I mean habitually non-Hamas contacts; people in business and civil society – that if people think there is a serious momentum moving this whole thing forward, the majority of the people in Gaza will want to be part of it. I don’t have a doubt about that. So the most important thing is for us to concentrate on getting this thing moving forward.

The Israeli government has practical objections to Palestinian statehood. The Israeli prime minister is saying, ‘The way the world works, statehood gives you the right to do things that, in the Palestinian case, we would feel threatened by: if they aligned with Iran, if they start importing weaponry…’ How serious a problem do you think that is? And on the other side, there’s the Palestinian refusal to define Israel as the state of the Jewish people. Are these red herrings, that can be left aside, that won’t interfere with an effort to change things, or are these issues that have to be tackled, real problems?

If everything is moving forward, these are resolvable issues to the satisfaction of both parties… I always get out a map now when I’m talking about this issue to people in Europe or in America. You get out a map showing the Israel-Palestinian territory. Then you get out a map showing the position of this plot of land amongst the broader region. And you educate people to the fact that, for Israel, you can’t contemplate a Palestinian state that is not stable and secure. That’s just the way it is. Now, likewise for the Palestinians, they can’t contemplate a state if it’s separated and broken into little bits, or even big bits.