All of this obviously happened long before Tony Blair's time. But now it seems that the former British prime minister, 72 years old, could well end up with another kind of mandate in this region. That is, according to US President Doanld Trump's recently released peace plan. Trump wants to end the conflict in Gaza, which started in late 2023 after the Gaza-based militant group Hamas attacked Israel, resulting in the deaths of around 1,200 people. The resulting Israeli military campaign has since killed over 65,000 people in Gaza. According to the Trump plan, after a ceasefire has been negotiated, Gaza should be run by a technocratic government, which is overseen by a so-called "Board of Peace." Trump would be the chairman of that board but it seems Blair is meant to play a leading role too. The latter has come in for a great deal of criticism in the region and further afield. "I think it's preferable that he stays in his own country and lets Palestinians rule themselves by themselves … rather than subjecting us to another colonial rule," Mustafa Barghouti of the Palestinian National Initiative told US news channel, CNN. Francesca Albanese, the UN's special rapporteur for the West Bank and Gaza, was even more disparaging on social media. Show additional content? This content is part of the text you are currently reading. The provider X / Twitter provides this content and may collect your usage data directly when you click “Show content”. Always show content from X / Twitter. In her reference to the Hague, Albanese is highlighting perhaps the darkest chapter of Blair's political history: his role in the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. Before that war began, Blair was one of the country's most successful and popular politicians. First elected in 1997, he became Labour's longest serving prime minister.