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barack obama
July 2009 
Speech by Tony Blair To American Council On Foreign Relations
Posted on Jan 10th, 2009
by 
Albert
Albert
Tony Blair, EX Premier of UK and now Mideast Quartet Representative gave a speech in December 2008 in Washington DC. I always appreciated Tony Blair as most relevant European Politician for the last 10 years. Its good that the contributes his long Mideast experience and perspectives in conversations with President Elect Barack Obama and his advisors.
See:
Salam Alaikum, Tony!
Building foundations on the ground key to sucessful Middle East negotiations, says Tony Blair
Speech of Mideast Envoy Tony Blair to CFR
Speech by Quartet Representative Tony Blair to the Council on Foreign Relations, Washington DC
CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY
In the past 15 months as Quartet Representative to the Middle East I have learnt a great deal.
I have learnt that the Israeli-Palestinian issue - seemingly intractable - can be solved. I have had reinforced my belief that indeed it must be.
So, how can it be done?
The past 40 years are littered with initiatives, signposts to various potential breakthroughs, unsatisfactory compromises, new dawns that swiftly turned to dusk and failed negotiations. Along the way, there have been immense gains that sometimes are obscured by the central impasse. Egypt and Jordan are at peace with Israel. The Arab Peace Initiative of the then Crown Prince Abdullah in 2002 signalled a new pan-Arab approach. The contours of the final status issues, if not their outcomes, have been clarified.
The Annapolis process and the limited but, nonetheless, real change on the West Bank during the past year - for which the President and Secretary Rice deserve much credit - have yielded a genuine platform for the future.
But the central impasse does indeed remain. My view - formed since I came to Jerusalem and refining much of what I thought when I tussled intermittently with the issue for 10 years as British Prime Minister - is that it remains because the reality on the ground does not, as yet, sufficiently support the compromises necessary to secure a final, negotiated settlement. In other words, we have tended to proceed on the basis that if we could only agree the terms of the two state solution - territory, refugees, Jerusalem - i.e. the theory, we would then be able to change the reality of what was happening on the ground i.e. the practice. In my view, it is as much the other way around. The political process and changing the reality have to march in lock-step. Until recently, they haven't.
The reason this is critical to resolving this dispute is as follows. The problem is not that reasonable people do not agree, roughly, what the two states look like. I don't minimise the negotiation challenge. But listen to sensible Palestinians and sensible Israelis and you will quickly find the gaps are not that big; certainly are not unbridgeable.
Ask the people, Israeli or Palestinian, and they will say very simply: yes, a two state solution is ideal; but then they will say, equally simply, no it can't happen. Why? Because each people has lost faith in the other's good faith. Israelis don't believe they have a partner for peace. Palestinians don't believe Israel is sincere in offering statehood.
The reasons for this are also simple. Put yourself in the shoes of Israel. For years Israel has fought for the right to exist. For years it has been surrounded by other nations, much larger than Israel, which question that right to exist. They tried, so they would say, to reach a settlement, most recently in 2000. They despaired of negotiation. So under Prime Minister Sharon, they decided to disengage from the Palestinians and create a de facto separation into two states. So they leave Gaza. In their eyes, they end "the occupation". They take 8000 settlers with them. They get Hamas and rocket attacks in return. Look at the map. Gaza threatens Sderot and Ashkelon but rockets cannot, as yet, reach from Gaza to the main centres of population in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv.
Israel cannot live with a Gaza-type mess on the West Bank. It cannot live with Hamas and their rockets a few miles from Ben Gurion airport. So now Israelis say: we have a failed set of steps for peace, a divided Palestine, a divided Palestinian authority and therefore no proper partner for peace.
Read more..
See:
Salam Alaikum, Tony!
Building foundations on the ground key to sucessful Middle East negotiations, says Tony Blair
Speech of Mideast Envoy Tony Blair to CFR
Speech by Quartet Representative Tony Blair to the Council on Foreign Relations, Washington DC
CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY
In the past 15 months as Quartet Representative to the Middle East I have learnt a great deal.
I have learnt that the Israeli-Palestinian issue - seemingly intractable - can be solved. I have had reinforced my belief that indeed it must be.
So, how can it be done?
The past 40 years are littered with initiatives, signposts to various potential breakthroughs, unsatisfactory compromises, new dawns that swiftly turned to dusk and failed negotiations. Along the way, there have been immense gains that sometimes are obscured by the central impasse. Egypt and Jordan are at peace with Israel. The Arab Peace Initiative of the then Crown Prince Abdullah in 2002 signalled a new pan-Arab approach. The contours of the final status issues, if not their outcomes, have been clarified.
The Annapolis process and the limited but, nonetheless, real change on the West Bank during the past year - for which the President and Secretary Rice deserve much credit - have yielded a genuine platform for the future.
But the central impasse does indeed remain. My view - formed since I came to Jerusalem and refining much of what I thought when I tussled intermittently with the issue for 10 years as British Prime Minister - is that it remains because the reality on the ground does not, as yet, sufficiently support the compromises necessary to secure a final, negotiated settlement. In other words, we have tended to proceed on the basis that if we could only agree the terms of the two state solution - territory, refugees, Jerusalem - i.e. the theory, we would then be able to change the reality of what was happening on the ground i.e. the practice. In my view, it is as much the other way around. The political process and changing the reality have to march in lock-step. Until recently, they haven't.
The reason this is critical to resolving this dispute is as follows. The problem is not that reasonable people do not agree, roughly, what the two states look like. I don't minimise the negotiation challenge. But listen to sensible Palestinians and sensible Israelis and you will quickly find the gaps are not that big; certainly are not unbridgeable.
Ask the people, Israeli or Palestinian, and they will say very simply: yes, a two state solution is ideal; but then they will say, equally simply, no it can't happen. Why? Because each people has lost faith in the other's good faith. Israelis don't believe they have a partner for peace. Palestinians don't believe Israel is sincere in offering statehood.
The reasons for this are also simple. Put yourself in the shoes of Israel. For years Israel has fought for the right to exist. For years it has been surrounded by other nations, much larger than Israel, which question that right to exist. They tried, so they would say, to reach a settlement, most recently in 2000. They despaired of negotiation. So under Prime Minister Sharon, they decided to disengage from the Palestinians and create a de facto separation into two states. So they leave Gaza. In their eyes, they end "the occupation". They take 8000 settlers with them. They get Hamas and rocket attacks in return. Look at the map. Gaza threatens Sderot and Ashkelon but rockets cannot, as yet, reach from Gaza to the main centres of population in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv.
Israel cannot live with a Gaza-type mess on the West Bank. It cannot live with Hamas and their rockets a few miles from Ben Gurion airport. So now Israelis say: we have a failed set of steps for peace, a divided Palestine, a divided Palestinian authority and therefore no proper partner for peace.
Read more..
Access: Public
Thank you for sharing that long but enlightening and hope-filled speech by Tony Blair!
Thanks Mila!
Tony is an excellent example how such a high profile person can connect and integrate different chapters in his/her own life to new level.
And Tony Blair is and was one of th extremely rare European Top Leaders who was pro European AND transatlanticist AND global thinker.
This is what Ken Wilber wrote in 2003 about Tony Blair:”.
..As for world leaders—are any taking something resembling an integral view? The only world leader who comes close, in my opinion, is Tony Blair. Blair—virtually alone, it seems to me—holds the multifarious sides fairly in awareness and draws conclusions (and courses of action) based on a bigger picture. He has insisted that the entire Iraqi situation be set in the context of a “two nation” policy with regard to Palestine and Israel, thus “giving” the Arab nations something in return, so to speak (but something they should be given in any event: a Palestinian state as an intrinsic part of the Mid-East package, starting now).
Blair, almost single-handedly, is sitting between America and Europe and screaming at both of them: you cannot start competing and fighting with each other—that road leads to more nightmares than you can imagine. Like a pan-Atlantic colossus at Rhodes, Blair has one foot in America and one foot in Europe, and heroically seems the only world leader attempting to keep that integration in existence. Further, he alone is keeping Bush oriented to the UN (which the American blue meme despises). Nor can he be charged with “trying to protect his oil interests,” because Britain is a net exporter of oil. His own vision has been consistent, disciplined, passionate but even-handed.
In my opinion, he is the only person of a world-leader stature; one can only imagine the dimensions of the disaster Bush’s international politics would create without Blair to hold the world together. (As an aside—and I truly do not mean to be unkind here—but one can’t help but imagine what on earth goes through Blair’s yellow-meme mind when he is sitting in a room alone with blue-meme Bush….) That Blair has also been an authentic pioneer in “third way” politics (cf. A Theory of Everything), which is one of the first serious moves toward an integral politics that unites the best of liberal and conservative, is perhaps no surprise. Given the actual world situation as it is now, Blair’s general position seems to be the best that can pragmatically be offered.”
Danke Albert,
Yes Tony Blair is one of those notable Third wave political figures and it is encouraging to see more world leaders and former presidents like Bill Clinton and Michael Gorbachev who are evolving both their world views and actions and may even have a bigger world impact post their presidency legacy. The Obama hopes and expectations are quite high and it may be a good idea to focus more on the ideas rather than leaders, but when they align so well as in the case of Barack - change happens on more than surface levels & it is quite powerful transformative force that empowers all of us to take part in it.
It is also a positive trend to see some of the integral theorists and consciousness lifters like Ken Wilber, Otto Scharmer & Don Beck dedicating more time, attention and action to those global hot issues and hot spots and applying the integral theory, Theory U and spiral dynamics to offer actual solutions of a new kind with global relevance and a pragmatic form of idealism in action. Hopefully more of them and us will follow & lead! D :)
Yes. its about collective leadership in big constellations. I just talked to George Por at I Community that the challenge is about connecting communities and big constellations. ON a global level.
And the transdisciplinary , transcontinental and global sphere of notes from the fields at Integral leadership Review is growing and growing.
So no longer any individual anmes are ssential for me. Certainly not any form of stardom. though for sake of entertainment to one degree or teh other.
Its about aligning as much depth and scope and horizontal span as fast as possible, as effective as possible and as sustainable as possible.
Implementing and anchoring EVERY FIELD, no matter if city, community, country, culture or other group as deep in healthy pre-blue foundations as possible.
This is worldwide a serious problem. And a tough challenge for the so called cultural creatives who did NOT adress this challenge up to now.
See also:
Worldforum2009: Networking Creativity to Solve Gglobal Challenges
IT WAS Tony Blair who created the concept of NU LABOUR, based on principles espoused by SDi, but unfortunately the OLD ORDER socialist libertarian MIND-SET prevailed and the British people will end up paying for the cost of Gordon Brown’s 12 years of ”blind” financial mismanagement. Perhaps Tony’s Blair’s “Churchill” moment has arrived ?
His following statement certainly indicates that 2B the case …
“What is required, rather, is an enhanced order of dedication to build
the reality on the ground which, according to the thesis I have
outlined today, is the necessary condition for a successful political
negotiation, ensuring the two dimensions are intertwined, each as
important as the other, each on its own much less than the sum of both
together.”
I never heard something about the UK spiral community around Chr. Cooke.
so what about the UK Core group of SDi?
And other integrally informed and inspired initiatives with poltical focus? Even at the London Integral Circle I am sensing a strange silence regarding cultural, poltical and other large scale change engagement.
Whats on?:):)
I THINK they have ALL gone the way of THE BRITISH !
And this means?..):)
IT has been my long standing experience that to SELL any NEW IDEA/s to any department of HMG is an extremely difficult process and that in the event of success on one front, the OLD CLASS SYSTEM kicks in, complacency abounds and it has become increasingly difficult, in recent years, to convince others to subscribe to the first converts commitment. Whereas once the NEW IDEA has been accepted by at least one department of the US Government, it spreads like a rash, and everybody wants a slice of the ACTION.
Sure..even easier than Max PLanck said about paradigm change.:):)
So what is the way of the British?
the way of the British IS IT NOT ? …
You said:
I THINK they have ALL gone the way of THE BRITISH !
So what exactly is this way in your eyes?
You have said, quite correctly, that the challenge is about connecting communities and big constellations on a global level in accordance with the principles espoused by SDi.
Tony Blair’s understanding of the NEED to ADDRESS these principles was, I truly believe, at the heart of his commitment to establish a completely NEW MODEL of politics for Britain in the guise of Nu Labour. Had it not been the case, I would not have voted for him being the leader of his new party to execute his plan, TWICE.
A majority of middle-income British voters were equally convinced to vote for NEW LABOUR because they believed that “things could only get better” as a result of Tony Blair’s plan to DO THIS, as a template for the rest of the world. Unfortunately very few of his colleagues wanted to subscribe to his plan or DO anything else than get back to good old socialist principles based on ever increasing bureaucracy. Even George Brown was obsessed from the outset in TOP DOWN CONTROL, by virtue of the fact that he gave independence of monetary control to the Bank of England so that he could strip away the regulatory powers from the Bank of England to create the FSA, which in the event has failed completely in its task and added greatly to the taxpayers’ costs.
“THINGS can only get worse” following these OLD ORDER MODEL principles,
which could indeed “perpetrate” in Britain, ALL that Karl Marx wrote about in Das Kapital; and any chance of Britain leading the way, in respect of establishing a NEW ORDER MIND-SET based on SDi, has now been lost forever.
A fact, which has not been helped by Christopher Cowan’s diversionary influence on the development of an SDi driven mindset in the UK.
What are we left with IS a BRITISH POLITICAL CLASS in CONTROL of the minds of the ever increasingly complacent British, that is worse than that of the European Union, preaching to the world that WE ALL need to re-build Humpty Dumpty rather than design a new one.
IT will NOT change here until the British rise from the ashes, in true poll-tax mode, in democratic revolt against THEIR BRITISH MASTERS. What form that will take … ONLY TIME will tell !
Thanks Michael, understand.
Do one point again is the the bad habit of integral infights. Old mindests cannot be overcome when new constellations have no clear lines.
Would say in general.
What is labeled as the cultural creatives isnt sufficient in itself. Only when respectful and comprehensive connectivity to ALL layers of the spiral is cultivated…in a sustainable way…real impact and momentum for changing mainstream will be generated.
I am really anticpating this years elections in UK and Germany. I am engaged in creating new connections in German speaking countries.
What is labeled as the cultural creatives IS NOT sufficient in itself… INDEED
ONLY when respectful and comprehensive connectivity to ALL layers of
the spiral is cultivated…in a sustainable WAY…real impact and momentum
for changing mainstream will be generated… EXACTLY
THERE IS …
LIGHT@the_end_of_the_tunnel
… BUT one must then ask - WILL the bottom drop out of Brand Blair ?
in the context of Michael Portillo’s article/statement that EVERY government needs an established Church, juxtaposed against Miss Harriet Harman’s Stalinesque “tendencies”.