Anyone thinking of organizing an aid flotilla for Gaza should instead utilize
the legitimate existing land crossings, where Israel is now lifting restrictions
on civilian goods, Quartet envoy Tony Blair said on Monday.
“If we
implement this policy so that the things that people are trying to bring in by
flotilla you can bring in through the legitimate existing crossings, do it that
way,” Blair urged in an interview with
The Jerusalem Post. “That is the more
sensible way to do that,” he said, amid reports that one or two ships may seek
to sail from Lebanon to challenge the naval blockade in the next few
days.
RELATED:UNRWA wants full blockade lift
‘Yes to coriander, no to Kassams’Blair, who played a central role in working with the government to
reverse the three-year policy of restricting civilian goods entering Gaza,
emphatically endorsed the Israeli security concerns that underpin the ongoing
naval blockade.
“Where I divide from some others in the international
community is that I think that Israel has got a genuine security concern
that it
is entitled to meet,” said the former British prime minister. “For me,
the fact
that Israel says, ‘Look, we’re not going to allow things into the [Gaza]
seaport, but you can bring them to Ashdod, and we can check them, and
then they
can come on to Gaza,’ I think that is a reasonable position.
What you
can’t justify is saying that basic foodstuffs and household items can’t
go into
Gaza.”
'Distinguish between security needs and daily needs'Indeed, Blair said he had been discussing the easing of those
restrictions with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu for a long time, and
well
before the fatal raid on the Mavi Marmara last month brought the issue
to the
top of the international agenda. “My argument was and always has been
that there
is a very clear distinction, the only distinction in the end you can
sensibly
justify, between the security needs of Israel and [the] daily life
[needs of
Gazans].”
Paraphrasing a Monday
Jerusalem Post
headline, he said: As you
put in your paper today, ‘Coriander, yes; Kassams, no.’ I can justify
that
policy. What I found hard to justify was ‘Coriander, no.’… There is a
constant
battle here [against delegitimization] that anyone in Israel is well
aware of.
That’s why the smart thing is always to be on the ground that you can
defend
most easily.”
When it was put to Blair that the previous government
policy had also been aimed at weakening Hamas and creating pressure for
the
release of kidnapped soldier Gilad Schalit, he noted: “The trouble is,
you have
the tunnels, which Hamas have a complete grip over… There was and is an
alternative means of goods coming into Gaza.”
Blair said he would now be
exploring the possibility of bringing PA forces to help oversee land
crossings
into Gaza, and restoring the EU’s role at the Rafah crossing.
“Improving
the conditions of people in Gaza by whatever means is helpful to the
overall
cause,” he said.
'Hamas know what to do to enter negotiations'Asked about the calls in some international quarters for
Hamas to be brought into the negotiating process, Blair said that was up
to
Hamas.
“It’s their choice, really,” he said. “Hamas know perfectly well
what they need to do in order to come into the process.”
The Quartet’s
preconditions for Hamas participation in the negotiating process “don’t
derive
from some capricious folly on the part of the international community,”
he
said.
If Hamas wanted to be “part of a negotiation for a state of
Palestine and a state of Israel,” he elaborated, it would have to shift
its
position from “saying we reserve the right to kill your citizens at the
same
time as we’re having this talk.”
If Hamas were interested in genuine
progress, he said, as a first step, in the wake of Israel’s policy
change,
“you’d release Gilad Schalit, wouldn’t you, and you’d say, ‘Now we can
get a
whole lot of prisoners released from the Palestinian side,’ and everyone
would
feel better. So if [Hamas] want to play a constructive [role], the door
is
absolutely open.”
Blair also played down the likelihood of the US or EU
seeking to impose the terms of an Israeli-Palestinian accord.
“There is
no solution that can simply be imposed,” he said flatly. “The most that
certain
parameters can ever do is help define a direction the parties wish to go
in… The
idea that you suddenly slap down a solution, and say, ‘That’s it, there
you are,
I’ve decided it’ – that’s not the way it works.”
He said he believed the
Palestinian Authority recognized this, and that he hoped the current
US-mediated
proximity talks would give way to direct negotiations “in the next
couple of
months.”
(The full interview with Tony Blair will appear in the Post
later this week.)