Britain’s former prime minister Tony Blaire said that he and other world leaders were wrong to yield to Israeli pressure to impose an immediate boycott of Hamas after the militant group won Palestinian elections in 2006, reports the Guardian.
Interviewed for a new book ‘Gaza: Preparing for Dawn’, Mr Blair said,
“In retrospect I think we should have, right at the very beginning tried to pull Hamas into dialogue and shifter their positions. But obviously it was very difficult, the Israelis were every opposed to it. But you know we could have probably worked out a way whereby we did – which in face we ended up doing anyway, informally.”
The boycott led by the George W Bush US administration at the time, pushed for a boycott of Hamas unless it abided by previous agreements between its Fatah predecessors and Israel.
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