Palestinians want Tony Blair dismissed

(Ahlul Bayt News Agency) - Palestinians have reiterated their demand for Tony Blair to be dismissed as the Middle East Quartet's envoy over his biased approach towards the Israeli regime.

Mohammed Ishtayeh, a member of the Central Committee of the Fatah movement repeated the Palestinians' calls to replace the former British Prime Minister as the Quartet's Mid-East envoy in an interview with Al-Jazeera satellite TV network.

Ishtayeh said Blair was no longer trusted to be an impartial mediator, stressing that discontent over the Quartet - the United Nations, the European Union, Russia and the United States - was pervasive throughout the Palestinian Authority's leadership.

“The Palestinian leadership has raised this issue very seriously. The general consensus among the Palestinian leadership is that he is not anymore an honest broker," Ishtayeh said, adding that "the expected thing for him to do is to say 'I'm sorry, goodbye.'"

"The biggest problem that he did actually for us is that all of a sudden he started speaking against our steps going toward the United Nations," noted the senior Palestinian official.

Earlier this month, Nabil Shaath, a senior aide to Palestinian Fatah Chief Mahmoud Abbas also described former British premier as "useless."

"Lately, [Blair] talks like an Israeli diplomat, selling their policies," Shaath told reporters in the West Bank city of Ramallah. "Therefore, he is useless to us."

It is not only Tony Blair, whose impartiality over the Middle East conflict is rightfully questioned, but the UK government is also under strong criticism over its recent move in blocking the arrest of former Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni on charges of war crimes in London.

Britain's top prosecutor on Thursday blocked an attempt to seek the arrest of visiting Israeli opposition chief Livni for committing war crimes during the regime's war on Gaza in 2008.

This is yet another clear example of the UK's double standards and bias towards Israel.

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