Herzog Meets Tony Blair in Jerusalem as Gaza Peace Push Accelerates

Isaac Herzog and Tony Blair are talking face to face in Jerusalem. Israel's president is hosting the Board of Peace's senior envoy at his residence, the Times of Israel reported Thursday. Blair's day job now is shepherding Gaza diplomacy, and this stop is a working visit, not a courtesy call.

The former British prime minister arrived with two documents in hand. He's pushing implementation of a comprehensive 20-point plan aimed at ending the war in Gaza, plus the newer 15-point roadmap designed to get Hamas to disarm. Getting both moving at once is the whole point of the trip.

Blair isn't the only Board of Peace figure making the rounds. Nickolay Mladenov, the body's High Representative for Gaza, was in Israel earlier this week, according to the same outlet. Two envoys, back-to-back visits, one message: the plan needs to move from paper to practice.

The meeting lands against a backdrop that refuses to stay quiet. Israeli strikes and raids continued across Gaza and the occupied West Bank in the days surrounding the talks, and Herzog has spent the week publicly balancing respect for Washington's leadership against rising anti-Israel sentiment in the United States. Diplomacy, in other words, is running alongside the fighting.

What comes next hinges on whether the roadmaps can survive contact with the ground. Blair's mandate depends on Israeli and Hamas buy-in, and the envoys' shuttle diplomacy signals the push is still active rather than stalled. Whether it produces anything measurable is the question Jerusalem and Gaza are waiting on.