Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair would help run Gaza as part of an international board under a peace agreement proposed by US President Donald Trump.
Blair was the first-named member of a “Board of Peace”, chaired by Trump, which would temporarily oversee Gaza’s governance, if Hamas accepts the proposal.
Trump said “leaders from other countries” on the board will be named later.
Blair has welcomed the Trump peace plan, announced from the White House as the US president hosted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The former British leader described the blueprint as “bold and imaginative”.
Blair said the plans were “the best chance of ending two years of war, misery and suffering”.
Just what the precise role Blair would play remains far from clear. According to The Guardian and Haaretz in Israel, which have seen the complete Trump plan, he would head an international transitional authority overseeing the day-to-day governance by a committee of Palestinian technocrats.
The Middle East is a familiar region of the world for Blair, who occupied 10 Downing Street from 1997 to 2007, though he enjoys far from universal support there.
Just hours after resigning as UK prime minister, he was appointed special envoy to the Middle East by a group of powers known as the Quartet – the US, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations.
He stepped down from the post in 2015, but continued to forge links with Middle Eastern countries through his think tank, The Tony Blair Institute for Global Change.
But his decision to send British troops in support of US President George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq in 2003 made him a divisive figure throughout the Middle East.
It was later established the invasion was based on false claims about weapons of mass destruction, and spurred calls for Blair to be tried as a war criminal.
But fast forward two decades, and Blair has the backing of key international figures, including Trump, who described him as a “good man”.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has also thrown his support behind Blair playing a role in any future Gaza peace deal.
“Tony Blair is someone who’s always played a constructive role,” he said on the weekend during his trip to the UK,” he said.
“He’s someone who does look for solutions. He’s someone who has been involved in the Middle East issues for some period of time, and I’m sure that he will always play a constructive role, because that’s the nature of Tony Blair.”