Would you buy a second hand road map from these men?

Tony Blair (left) with Lord Levy his good friend, fundraiser and tennis partner; Levy was Blair's Middle East peace envoy - now Blair is to represent the entire New World Order in the region

Tony Blair - the man who brought you the dodgy dossier detailing Saddam Hussein's non-existent weapons of mass destruction - is now to take charge of the "road map" towards a just settlement between Israel and the Palestinians.

British politicians have a long and dishonourable record in this part of the world, dating back to the Balfour Declaration of 1917, while British forces have periodically had to pay the price for our leaders' perfidy. Blair's appointment as the world's most unlikely peacemaker is likely to extend this pattern for at least another generation.

According to Tuesday morning's papers, Blair's appointment will be announced later today. Nominally he has been chosen by the "quartet" of the United States, United Nations, European Union and Russia, but it is understood that the job offer originated in a conversation between Blair and Bush, similar to the infamous "Yo Blair" discussion recorded by a stray microphone at the 2006 G8 summit.

The other members of the "quartet", theoretically responsible for the "road map" towards a Palestinian settlement drawn up in 2003, merely rubber stamped the agreement between Bush and Blair.

Blair's spin doctors and compliant journalists such as the Guardian's Patrick Wintour have already begun suggesting that he will "make it a central part of his mission to work to restore Palestinian unity after the armed takeover of the Gaza Strip by the Islamist movement Hamas."

The former prime minister and his stooges are starting early in what will undoubtedly be a persistent pattern of twistspeak. Let us remember that Hamas won a landslide victory last year, in an election which independent observers conceded was free and fair, but the Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah party were reluctant to concede power - and especially reluctant to relinquish control of the security forces.

A deal between Fatah and Hamas to share power appeared to have been brokered in February this year, but Western and Israeli sanctions remained in force, demanding that Hamas should sign up to previous Israeli-Palestinian peace deals, recognise Israel and renounce violence.

While demanding that Hamas "renounce violence", the US-UK-Israeli axis actively encouraged the most corrupt gangster elements in Fatah, notably the notorious Mohammed Dahlan, commander of Fatah's euphemistically named Preventive Security Force in Gaza.

Mohammed Dahlan - the gangster who will enforce any
"peace" deal brokered by Blair

Just before Christmas Dahlan's forces staged an ambush near the Rafah border terminal in Gaza, attempting to assassinate the Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniya.

This was just the most prominent of many attacks by Dahlan, who was hated even by many in Fatah. These dissident Fatah elements clearly cooperated with Hamas when the latest civil war erupted on Sunday June 10th, but Dahlan remained the protegé of Elliot Abrams, the arch-Zionist Middle East policy chief for President Bush.

The spark which ignited the latest conflict was the kidnapping of Imam Mohammed al-Rafati by Fatah gunmen at his mosque near the Islamic University in Gaza. The imam, brother of a local Hamas leader, was shot and seriously wounded. (It was initially reported that he had been shot dead).

The bloody reality of life in Gaza

Open street warfare raged for two days, and by Tuesday June 12th Hamas was effectively in control of Gaza.

The U.S. and Israel quickly moved to boost Fatah in the West Bank, while trying to tighten the screw on Hamas in Gaza.

Western commitment to peace and democracy may be judged from the fact that one of the key players called in for talks with U.S. diplomats was Mohammed Dahlan - the very Fatah gangster most responsible for the worst of the violence that provoked civil war in Gaza.

Peacemaker Blair will undoubtedly see Dahlan as a key ally - and another undoubted friend of democracy in this perspective is Avigdor Lieberman, the Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister.

Earlier this month Mr Lieberman attacked rival MP Wasal Taha as a "representative of terrorists", adding: "I hope Hamas deals with you, too. Your day will also come."

Avigdor Lieberman (left), the Israeli minister who threatens rival MPs, seen here with US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice

It is difficult to imagine a government minister in any other country taunting and threatening a rival MP in this fashion, but we can rest assured that Tony Blair will continue to be a faithful friend of Lieberman and his colleagues as they continue to build Israel's very special brand of democracy.

The dirty work of attempting to enforce "moderation" among the Palestinians - in other words forcing them to recognise Israeli legitimacy - will continue to be supervised by the American general Keith Dayton, working with Abbas and Dahlan.

Blair's role will be to put a plausible gloss on the brutal enforcement of what the State Department's spokesman recently termed "a well-governed state" in a nominally independent Palestine.

Palestinians in Gaza - whose only sin was to elect the wrong party - are continuing to pay the price for defying their imperial masters in Tel Aviv, Washington and London. According to UN agencies the closure of the Karni border crossing into Gaza will prevent the rebuilding of 16,000 homes for destitute Palestinian families and will lead to very serious food shortages within the next two weeks.

The starving and the homeless in Gaza are unlikely to invest much hope in their new prospective saviour Tony Blair. After all this is the man who joined George Bush in deliberately postponing calls for a ceasefire in the Lebanon last year, foolishly hoping that Israel would, given time, be able to annihilate Hezbollah.

This is the man who lied to his own party, issuing two "dodgy dossiers" supposedly based on intelligence about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, which we were told could be deployed within 45 minutes but none of which have been found, more than 45 months after the illegal invasion which these lies justified to Parliament and the country.

The Middle East's new peacemaker, whom all sides in the region's conflicts will be expected to trust, is the man who supplied his friend President Bush with intelligence about Saddam's supposed plans to obtain uranium in Niger for use in nuclear weapons - reports which turned out to be based on blatantly forged documents.

As Iraqi civilians, and British and American troops, struggle to cope with the bloody chaos unleashed in post-Saddam Iraq, Tony Blair has uttered not a single word of apology. The official most responsible for what at best was a fiasco and at worst was politically motivated manipulation of intelligence - John Scarlett - was knighted and promoted.

Now Blair himself gets his due reward as warmonger turned peacemaker.

Robert Fisk, one of the few British journalists who has reported consistently and courageously on the region for decades, spoke for many among the voiceless Palestinians when he reacted thus to recent rumours of Blair's appointment:
I remain overwhelmed that this vain, deceitful man, this proven liar, a trumped-up lawyer who has the blood of thousands of Arab men, women and children on his hands is really contemplating being "our" Middle East envoy.

Those Britons foolish enough to believe that the new government of Gordon Brown might see their country begin to extricate itself from the shame of Blair's Middle East policy should now be able to perceive the reality. Brown and Blair are the true allies of Balfour, who betrayed Britain's Arab allies in 1917. The draughtsmen of the road map are the heirs of Sykes and Picot, the imperialist functionaries who redrew the map of the Middle East in 1916, with the bloody long term consequences that can now be seen in virtually every news broadcast .

Arthur Balfour (left) and Lord Rothschild conspired to betray Britain's guarantees to the Arabs who fought alongside us in the First World War

Present and future generations of British servicemen will therefore follow in the footsteps of those who believed they were keeping the peace in Palestine from 1945 to 1948. Men like Eric Lowe, who wrote in 2000:

Throughout the current conflict in Israel, British Palestine veterans have been preparing for our reunion this coming Saturday at Eden Camp in Yorkshire. Inevitably the plight of the Palestinians is a topic which comes up whenever we are in discussion. I have spoken to a great many of my comrades in connection with the reunion and everyone is appalled by Israel's extremely callous actions. We tried to ensure that the Balfour Declaration was upheld in full, including it being clearly understood that nothing should be done that might prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.

The sacrifices of Eric Lowe and his comrades were regarded as an embarrassment by their political masters once the Jewish terrorists who were their principal foe had become the new rulers of Israel.

There is no official death toll for the British forces in Palestine during that period, though it is thought to be around 400. There was no memorial to their sacrifice for more than fifty years - and even then their remaining comrades had to pay for it themselves. Until 2000 there was not even any recognition of the campaign at the Armistice Day parade in London.

Tony Blair's new role as self-appointed Palestinian peacemaker is the final insult to their memory, and the ultimate degradation for Britain's already tarnished reputation in the Arab world.