Get third parties to end war in Gaza – POLITICO

Get third parties to end war in Gaza – POLITICO

“This is how you end the Gaza conflict and Hezbollah’s Lebanon conflict by doing what they were supposed to do 18 years ago,” Blair said on POLITICO’s Power Play podcast on Monday.

He said the besieged Gaza area should be ruled neither by Israel nor Hamas, but by an unspecified third party as part of a peace deal to “start a process of reconstruction.”

The Israeli military bombed and destroyed Hezbollah’s headquarters in Beirut on Sunday, killing the leader of the Iran-backed militant group and political movement, Hassan Nasrallah. This week Israel launched a ground attack in southern Lebanon, its northern neighbor.

Iran carried out a direct missile attack on Israel on Tuesday, for which Israel has promised retaliation.

The Israeli military bombed and destroyed Hezbollah’s headquarters in Beirut, killing Hassan Nasrallah. | Chris McGrath/Getty Images

The major escalation followed Hezbollah’s rocket attack on Israel immediately after Hamas’ attack on October 7, which forced some 80,000 Israelis to flee their homes in the north of the country. Israel responded with its own airstrikes, and since then there has been an almost daily cross-border firefight between the two.

“Israel has decided to take action to eliminate this threat from the north,” Blair said. “I could give you a long list of criticisms that I have made about the Israeli government over the years, but you have to understand that they were attacked on October 7th and October 8th, and therefore,” they will defend yourself.”

“It is Israel’s way of defending itself when it is attacked,” he said.