Former UK leader dropped from Trump’s Gaza 'board of peace': Report

LONDON

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has been dropped from US President Donald Trump's proposed “board of peace" for Gaza following objections from Muslim countries, according to a report Monday.

Tony Blair, 72, is now out of a key role in Trump's plan to establish a council to administer Gaza, according to statements made to the Financial Times by figures close to the parties.

Although Blair’s backers had pointed to his pivotal, hands-on role while prime minister in 1998 in mediating and securing the Good Friday Agreement, a landmark peace deal that ended the violence in Northern Ireland, he was viewed with skepticism and hostility among the Arab world due to his role in the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

As a Labour Party politician, he served as the prime minister from 1997 to 2007.

Blair had been the only name publicly identified for a potential role on the board when Trump in September unveiled his 20-point plan to end the war between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas, with the US president saying Blair was a "very good man."

The plan had been criticized by many for its lack of a clear timeline to Palestinian statehood and suggesting the Gaza Strip be run under a separate legal framework to the occupied West Bank.

The idea also led to concerns that Palestine’s two non-contiguous elements, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, risked no longer be envisaged as a single polity.

It came after Israeli media reported Saturday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a secret meeting around a week ago with Blair as part of moves related to "the day after" arrangements in the Gaza Strip.

However, a source who spoke to the Financial Times suggested that Blair could still play a less central role, adding: "He could still have a role in a different capacity, and that seems likely."

"The Americans like him and the Israelis like him," said the source.

The person suggested that the board will be made up of serving world leaders and "there will be a smaller executive board under that."

Since October 2023, Israel has killed more than 70,000 people, mostly women and children, and injured nearly 171,000 others in Gaza in a more than two-year war that came to a halt under a ceasefire deal that took effect on Oct. 10.