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Ear to the Ground

Blair Cancels Gaza Trip After Security Warning

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Posted on Jul 15, 2008
Tony Blair
Flickr / World Economic Forum

Tony Blair had hoped to visit Gaza in his capacity as Mideast envoy for the Quartet—that’s the U.S., the U.N., the EU and Russia—but had to cancel because of a “specific security threat.” It’s hard to be an envoy if you can’t get to where you need to go, but the former British prime minister promised to make it to Gaza eventually and “press for help for the people there.”

AP via Google:

Blair told The Associated Press that the threat was “specific” and “credible,” forcing him to call off the trip but he said it was a postponement, not a cancellation.

“I intend to go to Gaza as soon as I can, and I will continue to press for help for the people there,” he said.

Blair’s visit Tuesday was to have included a tour of a Gaza waste water project and meetings with traders and U.N. officials, but not with leaders of Hamas, the Islamic militant group that seized Gaza by force more than a year ago.

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By skulz fontaine, July 16 at 7:38 am #

Ah poor Mr. Mideast Envoy, couldn’t get to the Gaza. Darn “security warnings” anyway! Golly, how is it that war criminals like Tony Blair wander our suffering little blue planet and the Prosecutor at the ICC can ONLY find time for the president of Sudan? Wow, go figure.
Wouldn’t Mr. Mideast Envoy have had to take himself some waders for sloshing around the raw sewage that Gaza is awash in? Yeah, Mr. Mideast Envoy MUST have forgot his waders. Talk about “moral authority.” Blair isn’t!

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By Jim Yell, July 16 at 7:05 am #
(Unregistered commenter)

Tony Blair was given a pretend job to further enrich himself and inflate his ego after years of eating Bush Offal. Lap dog, bow wow

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By P. T., July 15 at 10:00 pm #

Former British prime minister Tony Blair promised to make it to Gaza eventually and “press for help for the people there.”

That’s a bit like Benito Mussolini showing up at the Warsaw Ghetto to press for help for the people there.

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By amunaor, July 15 at 8:16 pm #

Tony, the Bush-neocon enabler. Motto: get the surrogates to blow them up and then go to pretend like you’re going to pass out candy, only to case the joint, see what else there is to steal.

Peace, Best Wishes and Hope

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By Fadel Abdallah, July 15 at 7:09 pm #

“Hamas made security arrangements for Blair, setting up checkpoints in areas he was expected to tour, banning cars from using roads and lining streets with black-clad policemen carrying AK-47s.”
===========================
I am really surprised and confused about this part where Hamas made security arrangement for Blair! If I were a Gazan resident I would do my best that this symbol of colonialism, Blair, is prevented from stepping on the soil of this shattered land, for which Blair, the country he represents and the colonial legacy he’s a symbol of are the most responsible for the tragic situation in Gaza and all Palestine. Remember that it was evil British colonialists, in the form of the Balfour Declaration, that gave the Zionists the right and incentive to colonialize a land that did not belong to either of them.

In my dictionary of the law of equity and justice, Blair or any British with official capacity should not be welcomed in any part of Palestine. In fact, they should be arrested and brought to justice for their crimes against humanity! I am one who will never forget or forgive the British role in all the mess they caused in this part of the world!

And now we read about supposedly revolutionaries and freedom fighters willing to function as bodyguards for someone representing an entity responsible for the misery of their people!

We must be living in a world were there are no more permanent noble principles, but constant shifting gimmicks they call “diplomacy” and I call “defeatism”!

Thank you “Hamas” for telling me I am one of the very few romantic revolutionaries left! Where are you Che Guevara?! God bless your soul! Our coward miserable world cries out for few hundred of your types; at least one for each country of this miserable world!

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