Cabinet in open revolt over Blair's Israel policy

[muriel_volestrangler]

Tony Blair was facing a full-scale cabinet rebellion last night over the Middle East crisis after his former Foreign Secretary warned Israel's actions risked destabilising the whole of Lebanon.

Jack Straw, now Leader of the Commons, said in a statement released after meeting Muslim constituents that while he grieved for innocent Israelis killed he also mourned the '10 times as many innocent Lebanese men, women and children killed by Israeli fire'.

Straw added that he agreed with the Foreign Office Minister Kim Howells that it was 'very difficult to understand the kind of military tactics used by Israel', adding: 'One of the many serious worries I have is that a continuation of such tactics by Israel could destabilise the already fragile Lebanese nation.'

The Observer can also reveal that at a cabinet meeting before Blair's Middle East summit talks with George Bush, minister after minister pressed him to break with the Americans' position and publicly criticise the Israelis for the scale of death and destruction in Lebanon. No one, according to one senior minister at the meeting, weighed in to support the Prime Minister.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,1833538,00.html

It would be nice if this actually meant Blair would go sooner. But I fear he'll just cling on to power, thinking he's the only person who knows what needs to be done - ie obey his master's voice. Having appointed a hesitant Foreign Secretary seems to have helped Blair get his way, though, as the article goes on to mention.

[Greeby]

1. It's all coming apart nt

[ugarte]

2. Blair is under robotic control, with a new master...

http://news.independent.co.uk/media/article1202848.ece

[Joe Bacon]

3. If they are in rebellion, why aren't they sacking him?

Phoney Baloney should have been sacked the minute he went to bed with Chucklenuts!

[Greeby]

4. The plan is to launch a leadership challenge at Conference in September

As far as I can tell :shrug:

[Sherman A1]

5. Too bad they will be waiting that long

there are a lot of dead bodies between now and September, but whatever works for them, I guess.

[Joe Bacon]

6. If ALL of the cabinet is in revolt, they should sack Phony Tony NOW

and replace him with Gordon Brown, who has some semblance of sanity. Every second that liar goes unchecked brings us closer to Armageddon

[bemildred]

9. They should try the old Roman methods. nt

[kenny blankenship]

7. Time to ditch him Britain!

[w4rma]

8. Then sack him *now*. Do not wait. Do not pass go. Sack him immediately.

The public support is there, right now, for his sacking. Politically it is a good move to sack him now. Tactically it is a good move to sack him now, as he is at an extremely low point in his poplularity. Sack him while the public is still supremely angry about Blair's support for Bush.

[IndianaGreen]

10. Robert Fisk: The truth of Blair's 'urgent diplomacy'

The truth of Blair's 'urgent diplomacy'

Blair and his masters regard ceasefires as a weapon, a means to a political end

By Robert Fisk

07/29/06 "The Independent"

Blair and his ignorant Foreign Secretary have played along with Israel's savagery with blind trust in our own loss of memory. It is perfectly acceptable, it seems, after the Hizbollah staged its reckless and lethal 12 July assault, to destroy the infrastructure of Lebanon and the lives of more than 400 of its innocents. But hold on a moment. When the IRA used to cross the Irish border to kill British soldiers - which it did - did Blair and his cronies blame the Irish Republic's government in Dublin? Did Blair order the RAF to bomb Dublin power stations and factories? Did he send British troops crashing over the border in tanks to fire at will into the hill villages of Louth, Monaghan, Cavan and Donegal? Did Blair then demand an international, Nato-led force to take over a buffer zone - on the Irish, not the Northern Ireland side, of the border?

Of course not. But Israel has special privileges afforded to no other civilised nation. It can do exactly what Blair would never have done - and still receive the British Government's approbation. It can trash the Geneva Conventions - because the Americans have done that in Iraq - and it can commit war crimes and murder UN soldiers like the four unarmed observers who refused to leave their post under fire.

And what of the Hizbollah, faithful servants of Syria and Iran, and its leader Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, God's first servant, perhaps, but that of Damascus and Tehran a close second? I have long believed that its attack across the Israeli border was planned months in advance. But I've now come to realise that Israel's assault on Lebanon was also planned long in advance - as part of the American-Israeli project to change the shape of the Middle East. The idea that Nasrallah is going to kneel before a Nato general and hand over his sword - that this disciplined, ruthless, frightening guerrilla army is going to surrender to Nato - is a folly beyond self-delusion.

But Blair and Bush want to send a combat force into southern Lebanon. Well, I shall be there, I suppose, to watch its swift destruction in an orgy of car and suicide bombings by the same organisation that yesterday fired another new longer-than-ever range missile that landed near Afula in Israel.

The Lebanese government - democratically elected and hailed by a US administration which threw roses at its prime minister after the US state department claimed a "cedar revolution" - has just caught the Americans off guard, producing a peace package to which the Hizbollah has reluctantly agreed, starting with an immediate ceasefire. Can Washington ignore the decision of a democratic government? Of course it can. It is encouraging Israel to continue its destruction of the democratically elected Hamas government in Gaza and the West Bank.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14264.htm