Cheap blackmail

The world is changing rapidly around us, and this requires us to focus and deeply understand the course of events and the reasons behind them in order for us to come up with a convincing explanation for such changes. This sometimes requires us to have successive waves of brainstorming to keep abreast of events and their repercussions.

The killing of 2,200 people during last summer’s war in Gaza and the destruction of thousands of homes over the heads of their inhabitants was not enough to stop Tony Blair, former British prime minister and the current Quartet Special Envoy for peace, from imposing restrictions and conditions on the drops of water and bites of food provided to nearly 2 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

Blair’s conditions amount to nothing but extremely cheap blackmail, practiced by a man who is morally bankrupt but physically wealthy. What else can we call the five conditions he imposed on Hamas during his visit to the besieged and bereaved Gaza Strip two days ago?

Blair, just like Netanyahu, believes that there is no place for the weak in this world. Such men draw their concepts of life and conflict from the wilderness of the jungle; Blair’s conditions go hand in hand with Netanyahu’s recent statements during the Knesset elections campaign.

But, unlike Blair and Netanyahu believe, those who are weak are those who maintain value and integrity, not those who do not possess planes or tanks to mercilessly kill women and children. Those who have rights and morals and who have owned the land for thousands of years are the ones who are strong and will remain so for a long time. However, those who gain their strength from their unjust military will quickly fade in a matter of years or decades, and history will soon forget them.

Shouldn’t it be considered blackmail that Blair talks about such conditions amid the ruins of Gaza? Imposing such restrictions at the same time he is seeing first-hand the barbarism and criminality of Western civilisation; a civilisation that calls itself modern, progressive, and the protector of human rights.

I would like to reflect shortly on Blair’s five conditions. They are the for the Palestinians to accept a political programme based on a Palestinian state on 1967 borders; to affirm that Hamas is a Palestinian faction with only Palestinian goals and not part of any regional Islamist movement; to adopt a two-state solution as a final, not temporary, solution for the Palestinian-Israeli conflict; to send a message of assurance to Egypt that Gaza is not a base for Sinai terrorists and to hold talks with the Egyptian government to stop terrorism in Sinai.

It is a well-known fact that Blair is not a figure to be trusted – his misinformation and fabricated evidence regarding the non-existence of WMDs in Iraq when he was British prime minister caused the death of nearly one million Iraqis.

The message that Blair is telling the Palestinians is that in order for the international community to accept them, they must give up their values, morals, and beliefs that do not fit into Western parameters and narratives. This is due to the fact that the international community is essentially consisted of Western countries that orbit America and its interests. Anyone deviating from this is fought, persecuted, and labelled with pejorative terms, the least of which being “terrorism”.

Palestinian resistance against the occupation, using all means and methods, is permissible in accordance with international law. France fought and resisted Hitler, and America fought the British occupation; but America, Blair, and the West want a resistance based on their own terms, i.e. soft-power coupled with candlelight vigils, sit-ins, screams, and crying. Meanwhile, dropping bombs from planes and killing hundreds and thousands of Gazans is left to Netanyahu and is later justified as self-defence against Gaza’s rockets.

Any agreement signed under pressure and injustice cannot last until the balance of power is changed. We must learn from the experience of history that the beliefs instilled in people’s hearts and minds cannot be erased by ink on a paper.

Translated from the Palestine News Network, 18 February, 2015

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.