KEY POINTS:
There is something breath-takingly banal about British Prime Minister Tony Blair being nominated by George Bush to become the western world's envoy bringing peace and harmony to the Middle East.
Blair is desperate to recreate a legacy for himself. His 10 years in power has ended in rejection
by his own mates and his reputation after becoming George Bush's "wee helper" in Iraq is in tatters.
Over the past months, Blair has tried to get himself the EU presidency. Unfortunately for him, his fellow European rulers have never liked him and told him to naff off. His next manoeuvre was to become head of the World Bank. But after the previous Bush acolyte was sacked from the bank's top job, the world's financial mandarins were in no mood to put up another lackey.
So Blair slunk off and asked Bush to help him. It reveals a lot about the two men that they actually believe there is any credibility in Blair becoming an "honest broker" for peace in the Middle East.
Everybody else in the world knows that Blair is totally discredited in the region. He is seen as Bush's poodle. Like Bush, he lied to his own citizens to justify his country's invasion of Iraq. Last year, he tacitly supported Israel's invasion of Lebanon and obstructed UN attempts to stop the killings of civilians. He has failed in everything he has tried in the Middle East.
It must be a combination of vanity and delusion that he believes he can fix Palestine and Iraq. Even senior Labour Government figures say that it's a joke. But after Bush started twisting arms for Blair they had no choice.
Blair's new job with the Middle East "Quartet" - USA, UN, Russia and the European Union - is deeply cynical. Their decision is entirely about their own internal agendas and nothing about deep injustice or stopping the deaths and misery of millions of innocent people.
There are two goals for Blair. Get Bush and himself off the hook by finding a way for Bush to declare victory in Iraq and get out. The other is to impose a "Palestinian solution" on Israel's terms. If he pulls it off, he believes he can restore his legacy.
Blair is lucky that Bush knows he's in deep trouble and needs a way out of the Iraq quagmire before his presidency finishes. Bush doesn't want to go down in history as the bozo who messed up the world. With his own Republican Party turning on him, he needs a face-saving way out of Iraq fast. Blair will be Bush's unofficial mouthpiece in Iran and Syria. If Blair ingratiates himself with enough Middle East rulers he might be able to weasel some concessions. Bush can then declare victory and get his butt back stateside.
In terms of Palestine, Blair is just fig-leaf cover for Israel as they carve up the West Bank. Blair has always been an unashamed supporter of Israel and how he can even believe that he can be trusted by the Palestinians is astonishing. But then, his strategy has nothing to do with justice for them but entirely about resurrecting his former reputation. To do that, he will wheel and deal with dictators, despots and murderers to get an outcome acceptable to Israel and Bush.
The strategy will go something like this: Fatah and Mahmoud Abbas will become the new "partners for peace" in a bid to marginalise Hamas. After Hamas defeated Fatah in Gaza, the US and Israel promised Abbas support if he sacked the elected Government and installed their allies into power. I guess that's why we don't hear calls from Bush and Blair these days for democracy. In the real world, we call this action a coup, but according to the Quartet it's called creating a framework for peace and creating a space for "moderates".
Of course, there will be no talk of Hamas being the genuine democratic choice at the ballot box for Palestinians. Nor will they mention that Fatah militias have been financed and armed by Israel and the US after Hamas defeated them in the last election. The irony of the US and Israel once supporting and funding Hamas against Fatah isn't lost on Palestinians. It's the same own goal when the US was funding Bin Laden in Afghanistan against the former communist regime there.
We'll also hear the newly converted Catholic Blair go on about morality and how he's absolutely convinced he is being righteous. The last time Catholics came to the Middle East to save the people, it was called a crusade and thousands perished then too. But the Anglo powers have never been too good at reading their history in this part of the world.
Even Israel seems to forget its history too. It was the Nazis who first thought of the idea of building a wall to imprison a people. In Poland the Jewish inhabitants were walled up in ghettos during World War II. Now the offspring of these victims use the same strategy to subjugate others. As the wall gets bigger, they are able to steal even more land from the Palestinians. I'm looking forward to Blair explaining this crime away. Maybe, as a spin doctor of the highest order he could rename the wall the "peace curtain".
Israel Prime Minister Ehud Olmert mustn't be able to believe his good luck. He has Abbas without any credibility or power, Bush prepared to impose any deal before he leaves office and Blair willing to do whatever it takes to make himself look good.
If they all play their cards right they may get what they want. But it won't have anything to do with justice for the Palestinians.
