Blair to leave Middle East envoy post after years of struggling diplomacy

Former British prime minister Tony Blair is standing down as the Quartet representative in the Middle East, the organization said on Wednesday, after eight years struggling to break ground in peacemaking between Israel and the Palestinians. Officials close to the Quartet of the United States, European Union, United Nations and Russia, said Blair, 62, would continue to play an informal role in trying to forge a two-state solution between the Palestinians and Israel. The Palestinians were not happy with Blair’s economic focus, feeling the main priority was a state they seek in territory Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war.

He had no rules except to sometimes listen to what Netanyahu had to say.

A senior Palestinian official, Hanan Ashrawi

He tried to pull together the strands of diplomacy between Washington, Brussels, New York and Moscow as a high-profile go-between. But Blair failed to gain the full trust of either the Palestinians or Israel, which has always kept its closest contacts with the United States via the secretary of state. Blair sought to reinvigorate Middle East diplomacy at a time when international brokers had largely failed to bring Israel and the Palestinians closer to a resolution of their generations-old differences.

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