Tony Blair's post Downing Street role as a Middle East peace envoy will today come under the spotlight when the former prime minister returns to Westminster to face questions from a select committee.
Blair will be questioned about his work as envoy to the quartet of the EU, the US, Russia and the UN, which has seen him at the heart of negotiations over one of the world's most intractable conflicts for the past two years.
Members of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee will ask Blair for his assessment of recent developments, notably the conflict in Gaza and the election of a new US administration and Israeli government.
The committee, made up of 14 MPs, is entrusted to monitor the policy, administration and expenditure of the Foreign Office and its associated public bodies.
It will be the third evidence session for the committee's inquiry, entitled Global Security: Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
In early 2009, the panel decided to conduct a follow-up to its 2007 inquiry, Report on Global Security: The Middle East, in light of recent developments.
So far, members have taken evidence from academics and analysts as well as from the Foreign Office minister, Bill Rammell.
Blair says he remains optimistic about a peaceful solution in the Middle East despite the Israeli offensive in Gaza and the election of Benjamin Netanyahu, the leader of the rightwing Likud party, as the Israeli prime minister.
"One thing I learned is that you simply just don't give up," he said in a recent interview with Time magazine.
He has already met Netanyahu, who has said he will continue peace talks but has left open the question of whether Israel would accept a Palestinian state.
Blair's role as envoy has seen him champion a number of causes including the creation of a major new industrial park on the northern edge of the Palestinian city of Jenin, in the occupied West Bank.
If and when the work is completed, the park will provide jobs for 15,000 Palestinians.
However, he has also faced criticism. Although his responsibility as envoy is largely limited to helping rebuild the Palestinian economy and institutions rather than brokering a peace deal, voices on the Palestinian side have spoken of his irrelevance.
Mustafa Barghouti, a member of the Palestinian parliament, said recently: "If I am honest, I would say that his mission was a failure."
Blair faces the parliamentary panel in the wake of the deadliest outbreak of fighting between Fatah and Hamas in the West Bank for two years.
Three policemen from a force loyal to Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president and Fatah leader, were killed when they tried to arrest militants from IslamistHamas in the city of Qalqilya.
Two Hamas fighters, along with the owner of the house in which they were sheltering, were killed.
The fighting came as relations between the US and Israel hit a low unseen in nearly two decades after the Jewish state rejected Barack Obama's demand for an end to settlement construction in the West Bank and Washington threatened to "press the point".
* Tony Blair
* Foreign policy
* Middle East
* Israel
* Palestinian territories
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/jun/01/tony-blair-middle-east
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