Opinion: Palestine will outlast Blair and his grotesque 'Board of Peace'

Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair’s latest reported intervention in the Middle East would be astonishing coming from any supposed mediator. Coming from Blair, it feels almost grimly on brand. Jeremy Greenstock, Britain’s former ambassador to the United Nations, says he learned from a ministerial-level source that Blair asked the Palestinian Authority (PA) to remove references to “Palestine” from its school curriculum. More extraordinary still, according to Greenstock’s comments to Middle East Eye, the request was not simply to erase the word, but rather to replace references to “Palestine” with “Samaria” - the biblical Hebrew designation used by Israel for part of the occupied West Bank, and a term deeply embedded in the ideological vocabulary of the Israeli settler movement. Read more: Palestine will outlast Blair and his grotesque 'Board of Peace' Opinion by Soumaya Ghannoushi Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, pictured in 2023, has denied a report that he sought to have the word ‘Palestine’ removed from Palestinian textbooks (Charles McQuillan/AFP)