Blair raises concerns over Gaza blockade

[BootinUp]

CNN

Blair, an envoy for the Middle East Quartet -- the U.S., Russia, the European Union and the United Nations -- working toward peace in the region, said Israel's blockade of the region since 2007 wasn't working.

"At the moment the difficulty with the current policy, apart from the events from the last few days is that we're not helping the people and isolating the extremists," Blair told CNN. "We're in danger of doing it the wrong way round."

Blair also backed the U.N. Security Council's call for a "prompt, impartial, credible and transparent" investigation into the raid which led to the deaths of at least nine people.

"I've been saying that for the best part of two years that this (the blockade) is a policy that doesn't work," Blair said.


Story and Video of interview at the link.
http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/06/02/tony.blair.flotilla.israel/index.html?hpt=T3

[Arrowhead2k1]

1. You know Israel has an image problem when they got Tony Blair on their case. nt

[brendan120678]

2. True, the blockade isn't working because...

any weapons smuggled into Gaza usually go via the tunnels in Egypt. It's much more difficult to patrol all of those, so Israel sets up this blockade to make it look like they are trying to stop arms smuggling when, in fact, most of the goods they stop are meant as humanitarian aid.

[izquierdista]

3. Policy that doesn't work

At least they have the world's #2 expert on it. Maybe he can bring in his #1 chum to fuck it up worse: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtEH6wZXPA4

[LeftishBrit]

4. Shocker - I agree with Tony Blair on something!

'At the moment the difficulty with the current policy, apart from the events from the last few days is that we're not helping the people and isolating the extremists," Blair told CNN. "We're in danger of doing it the wrong way round."'

Quite right, Tony. Now why didn't you ever see it with regard to Iraq?