blair

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
Earlier, Quartet Envoy Tony Blair said that while the most important reason to settle the conflict was for the sake of Israelis and Palestinians the strategic importance of the dispute in the world was "vast and profound." "This dispute has not caused the extremism and settling it will not in itself stop it," he said. "But, long ago, I began to look at this region not as a series of disconnected little tableaux of issues and challenges, but as one big picture. And today that picture spreads across not just the region, but the world." He said that But the terrorism was essentially the most ugly and outward manifestation of something deeper. "The essence is the struggle going on inside Islam: either to modernize and embrace today's world; or retreat in the face of it into reactionary old-fashioned defiance, in which the West and all its allies, including for these purposes Israel, is seen as the enemy." Blair said that Iran had decided to put itself at the head of this extreme and misguided view of Islam. "Ask yourself: do they want a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian question or not? If the answer is no, it can give some kind of indication as to why it is so important there is one."