Tony Blair, erstwhile Prime Minister of Britain, toils away like Sisyphus trying to get the Palestinians to build a viable economy.  He finds how they defeat all efforts and sabotage themselves. 

"It is important to emphasize to the outside world that we are trying to urge Israel to get fuel into Gaza, and then the extremists come and kill the people bringing the fuel in."  (Jerusalem Post, May 15, 2008)

He calls it "a crazy situation". 

The "extremists" he speaks of are, needless to say, Palestinians. He seems reluctant to  blame them directly so he blames an abstraction, a "situation".

Is there any precedent in all human history for a people under continual attack by an implacable enemy supplying  that enemy with fuel, food, and medical treatment at their own expense and at risk of their own lives;  being fiercely berated by other nations, who would never consider doing anything of the sort themselves, if they even pause in supplying them; and getting no credit whatsoever for their generosity and heroism? In fact, the Israelis get the opposite – recrimination, blame, threats to their very existence, and even from their "best friends" endless insistence that they  make ever more concessions while their enemies never make any at all. 

Blair, as the representative of the interfering "Quartet", is not "trying to urge Israel", he is nagging it without any difficulty, because the Israelis are doing what he is urging them to do anyway, of their own accord. The present Israeli leadership, the Olmert-Livni-Barak government,  is to be blamed, not for refraining from keeping their vicious enemy alive and well, but for doing so.  

The "Quartet" knows that it is pointless to urge the Palestinian leadership to do anything at all because they just will not do it. So they nag the all-too-pliant Israelis to concede and concede. 

May Israel, as soon as possible, have new leaders who understand that the first duty of a government is to protect the nation!