Blair: Hamas must be involved in Middle East peace process

By JPOST.COM STAFF
Hamas must be involved in the peace process in the Middle East, Quartet envoy to the region Tony Blair told The Times. In an interview published Saturday, the former UK prime minister said that in the past, the issue of the Gaza Strip had been neglected in an effort to establish a Palestinian state in the West Bank. Such an effort, he was quoted as saying, "was never going to work and will never work." "Yes, we do need to show through the change we are making on the West Bank that the Palestinian state could be a reality. The trouble is that if you simply try to push Gaza to one side then eventually what happens is the situation becomes so serious that it erupts and you deliver into the hands of the mass the power to erupt at any point in time," he surmised.