Who is Tony Blair, the man being touted to run Gaza post war

According to a report by Dawn… Tony Blair, the ex-prime minister who led Britain into a war based on what later turned out to be false claims, is now reportedly eyeing a key role in running post-war Gaza.
According to a Financial Times, the former British premier is seeking a senior role in running the war-torn territory under a plan being prepared by US President Donald Trump’s administration. The report by the British daily quoted an anonymous source privy to the details as saying that Blair had been “proposed as the chair of the board of a ‘Gaza International Transitional Authority (Gita)’”.
Meanwhile, a BBC report said this governing authority would have the support of the United Nations and Gulf countries. Blair would lead the body before handing back control to Palestinians, it added, and further quoted his office as saying that he would not support any proposal including the displacement of Gazans.
Earlier, The Telegraph had reported that a plan — which also envisioned the establishment of Gita — prepared by the ex-PM’s Tony Blair Institute (TBI) for Gaza, had Trump’s backing.
These reports emerged after Blair visited the White House in late August to participate in a meeting presided over by Trump. The meeting was called to discuss the ongoing Israeli invasion of Gaza, as well as post-war plans for the Palestinian territory.
If these developments lead to Blair assuming a prominent role in governing the Gaza post-war, the question may arise whether he is the right person for the job, particularly in light of his role in the 2003 Iraq war.
Blair in office
Blair won his first term in office in 1997 as his Labour party swept to power after a gap of 18 years. It marked the inception of Blair’s decade-long premiership, during which he would see two more electoral wins.
A BBC report that outlined his tenure in the top office described the Labour party that came into power in 1997 as a “product of a tight-knit group” headed by Blair, his immediate successor in office, Gordon Brown, media chief Alastair Campbell, and British politician Peter Mandelson.
The report further described Blair’s first cabinet as a “mix of old and new Labour figures” in which “the hard left was banished to the wilderness”.
“And it quickly became clear that only Blair and Chancellor Gordon Brown really mattered when it came to the big decisions […] Ministers seemed to come and go with dizzying speed, as the cabinet reshuffle became Blair’s signature move.”
Blair’s government gave Britain 10 years of steady economic growth, boosted employment, poured money into schools and hospitals and brought peace to Northern Ireland through the Good Friday Agreement, to put it briefly. In 2004, his government also pressed ahead with plans to open the United Kingdom’s doors to Eastern European migrants.
But there were downsides, too, especially in terms of foreign policy.
Role in Iraq War
One of the most significant factors defining Blair’s time in power was his role in the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq. He led Britain into the war — a move that has been singled out as his biggest failure as the premier.
After the 9/11 attacks in 2001 in New York, Blair had expressed support for the US, saying the UK would stand “shoulder to shoulder” with Washington. Two years later, the UK would join the US in launching a war in Iraq.
The two main US-British arguments in favour of the war were that then-Iraqi president Saddam Hussein possessed deployable weapons of mass destruction and posed an immediate or near-term threat to the region, as well as to the US and the UK.
A BBC report report recalls that in 2003, “Blair had drawn on every last ounce of his persuasive skill to make the case for joining the US-led invasion to MPs and the wider public”.
However, the caucus belli began evaporating soon. A Guardian report recounts that just around a month into the war, then-UK spy chief Sir John Scarlett went to Blair’s press secretary Alastair Campbell’s office and asked: “How difficult would it be if it transpired we do not find evidence of Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction programme?”
Campbell’s reply was, “Very, very, very difficult.”
The then-press secretary’s words would come true for Blair in the years to come when a public inquiry into Britain’s role in the Iraq war would release its findings.
Led by John Chilcot, a five-member committee began investigating the matter in 2009 and conclude seven years later that Britain’s decision to go to war in Iraq was a failure born of flawed intelligence, lack of foresight and “wholly inadequate” planning.

The Chilcot inquiry, as it came to be known, found that Blair’s decision in 2003 had a “far from satisfactory” legal basis and his case for military action was over-hyped.
These findings were released nine years after Blair stepped down as the prime minister in 2007, with his popularity plunging, in which his decision to join the Iraq War seemingly played an instrumental role.
The legacy
Blair, who had told cheering supporters after his landslide victory in 1997: “A new dawn has broken”, went from being the most popular prime minister in British history to one of the least.
When he came to power, his Downing Street residence was “Corporate Headquarters of Cool Britannia”. In 2007, as he prepared to step down, polls showed the British were affluent but disillusioned.
The charismatic politician promising to be “purer than pure” ended up the first British prime minister to be quizzed by police in a criminal inquiry, as detectives probed to see if loans were offered to parties in exchange for state honours.
On taking power, Blair had said: “Mine is the first generation able to contemplate the possibility that we may live our entire lives without going to war or sending our children to war.”
But by the time he left office, from Afghanistan to Iraq, from Kosovo to Sierra Leone, he had sent British troops into battle more than any other preceding British prime minister since World War II.
For novelist Robert Harris, the decade of Blair leading Britain was a tragedy. “Blair was of my generation, and this was our shot, if you like. I won’t say we’ve messed it up, but it perhaps hasn’t lived up to all the expectations of that rosy-fingered dawn of May 1, 1997.”
And after 10 years interviewing and observing Blair, BBC documentary-maker Michael Cockerell had encapsulated the paradoxes of Blair’s emotional relationship with the British people. “It began when the charismatic prime minister swept people off their feet. But the early glow has long since dimmed, and at the end of the affair, both sides are sadder but wiser,” he had said.
Blair as the Middle East envoy
After leaving Downing Street, Blair served as the Middle East envoy for a group of international powers, the Quartet, comprising the US, European Union, Russia and the United Nations. The group’s website says its mandate “is to help mediate Middle East peace negotiations and to support Palestinian economic development and institution building”.
But according to a report by Al Jazeera, given his role in the Iraq war, Blair was not seen as the right person to facilitate peace in the Middle East right from the start.
Francis Beckett, a political writer and co-author of ‘Blair Inc: The Man Behind the Mask’, pointed out to Al Jazeera that “most fatally of all, the difficulty was that when he went to meetings in the Middle East, nobody knew which Tony Blair they were seeing — whether it was Tony Blair the Quartet envoy or Tony Blair the patron of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation or Tony Blair the principle of the consultancy firm Tony Blair Associates”.
Al Jazeera reported that Blair’s dealings after the end of his time as the prime minister included “advising Arab governments and consultancy work for the US investment bank JP Morgan”.
These dealings, “reportedly netted him millions of pounds” and “left him exposed to accusations of greed from many hardened critics, including those from within the party he led from 1994 to 2007”.
Blair’s reported plan for Gaza
Blair quit as the Middle envoy for the Quartet in 2015 and set up a non-profit organisation, the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, the very next year.
According to The Telegraph, the same organisation has now come up with a proposal to establish “a temporary body to rule Gaza, with no displacement of civilians, and a multinational effort to prevent the resurgence of Hamas”.
The British daily reported, citing sources, that the plan is known as the “day after”, on which Blair has been working since Israel began its genocide in Gaza in October 2023.
The report details that the plan includes the establishment of a Property Rights Preservation Unit, “which would aim to strengthen the rights of Gazans who voluntarily leave the territory by giving them a right to return”.
It also mentions the creation of Gita, which, it says, “would rule the post-war strip for several years before handing it over to the Palestinian Authority, which would be expected to undergo significant reforms beforehand”.
Meanwhile, questions over Blair’s potential role in running Gaza after the war remain.
A recent report by Al Jazeera highlighted: “Palestinian commentators have also said Blair failed them as (Middle East) peace envoy despite the quintessential British role in the conflict stretching over a century.
They have argued that while he oversaw economic projects during his tenure, he did little to halt illegal Israeli settlement expansion and settler violence, or advance Palestinian statehood, with some even accusing him of impeding statehood as a friend of Israel.“ complete report is on below link. Source: https://www.dawn.com/news/1944762/who-is-tony-blair-the-man-being-touted-to-run-gaza-post-war