Blair awarded $1m price for international relations work

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Blair awarded $1m prize for international relations work

* Rory McCarthy in Jenin
* The Guardian, Monday 18 May 2009

Tony Blair last night received the $1m Dan David prize for leadership at a ceremony at Tel Aviv university, a prize awarded for "achievements having an outstanding scientific, technological, cultural or social impact on our world."

Blair's office said 90% of the money from the prize – which is named after the international businessman and philanthropist Dan David – would be donated to the Tony Blair faith foundation that promotes religious understanding, by bringing together young people of different faiths across the world to learn directly with, from and about each other.

The former prime minister has been envoy to the Quartet of the EU, the US, Russia and the UN, for the past two years, putting him at the heart of negotiations over one of the world's most intractable conflicts. One of the flagship causes he has championed can be found on the northern edge of the Palestinian city of Jenin, on the occupied West Bank.

It has a large stretch of uninspiring land with a handful of disused warehouses. But this is supposed to become an major new industrial park, an international investment worth millions of dollars and designed to forge peace. Blair has been acting as intermediary between the Palestinians and Israelis to try and push the project forwards.

Speaking ahead of last night's ceremony, Qadoura Mousa, the Palestinian governor of Jenin, said Blair had made some progress in his role as envoy but the deadlock in the peace process was hugely damaging to attempts to boost the Palestinian economy.

Mousa is proud of how much the area has improved in recent months. He has hosted Blair and others, including the then US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice last year, and says the park could be a model for other projects.

But he is also deeply concerned that improved security and economic investment will come to nothing without progress on the political front: the removal of checkpoints, the freezing of Israeli settlement construction and serious talks on a future Palestinian state.

"Society cannot settle only with security or economic changes. It also needs a political angle," he said yesterday. "These checkpoints, this constant talk of excessive security, this makes us think that there is no Israeli partner for peace."

Over the two years he has spent as Middle East envoy, Blair's optimism about the chance of bringing peace has run up against the old, familiar challenges of Middle East peacemaking. Shortly after taking the job he spoke of a "moment of opportunity." Since then peace talks have restarted and then halted, a new right-wing government has come into power in Israel while Palestinian factions have deepened their divisions, and the conflict has claimed hundreds more lives.

The Jenin industrial park is typical. Work has been delayed, but construction should start next year. Security in Jenin, once a city under the sway of the Palestinian militant groups, has improved remarkably. If it is completed the park will provide jobs for 15,000 Palestinians, making a welcome dent in the mounting unemployment levels.

The Jenin industrial project first began as far back as 1995 in better economic times when it was easier for Israeli customers to visit Jenin and there was the prospect of an imminent peace agreement. It was dropped after the second intifada, the Palestinian uprising, broke out, and was only revived two years ago. Today the Jenin economy is still far weaker than a decade ago, with thousands of new graduates heading straight into unemployment.

"We don't struggle to improve our economy. We struggle for our freedom and independence," said Mousa.

Similar obstacles have held back Blair's other projects, although he has made progress in securing an important new mobile telephone frequency for the Palestinians. "The challenges are self-evident; the opportunities for peace less so," Blair told the US Senate foreign relations committee last week. "The opportunity is there. But it won't remain if not seized."

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So he gets $1m for what exactly? Securing a mobile frequency for Palestinians? That ought to solve all of their problems.