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Richard Gere came to visit the Middle East a few years ago and attracted more attention than most politicians. Both Israelis and Palestinians flocked to every location he stopped at, eating up everything he said.
The latest violence in Gaza has created de facto Islamic (i.e. Hamas) security-based control over Gaza and nationalist (i.e. PLO) control -- along with a new emergency government -- in the West Bank. The international community will quickly turn on the money faucet to the non-Hamas government, and Gaza will be left to burn and starve under the rule of the Palestinian Islamists.
The case of Alan Johnston has nothing to do with his neutrality but with the lawlessness in Gaza. I was on a delegation from the International Press Institute that visited Ramallah and we spoke to many authorities including Hamas ministers (at the time) and President Abbas. They were all against his abduction; no one mentioned his professional work except in praise of it.
I think the first thing that Blair as envoy should do is to travel throughout the occupied Palestinian territories and meet with ordinary people. He should visit the only crossing point out of the West Bank and talk to people leaving or returning, and if he still wants more he can go to Erez and realize the enormity of the tight restrictions imposed on the movement of people and goods. By simply going through the Israeli checkpoints, seeing the expanding illegal Jewish settlements and witnessing the absence of any political horizon amid the economic deprivation and hopelessness, he will know what he will need to do if he wants to succeed.
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