And finally, it was Mr. Blair who carved out for himself the new position of special envoy for the quartet in June 2007 — announced just hours after he stepped down as Britain’s prime minister. The position has helped him gain access to various Arab and world leaders — for several of whom his consulting business, Tony Blair Associates, has subsequently provided services.

A natural panderer to power, Mr. Blair morphed his complicity with the United States over Iraq into a new complicity with Israel. The assumption that operates is that schmoozing with the powerful is the only way to make a difference.

So while Mr. Blair worked to reform the Palestinian Authority’s finances, security and governance, he turned a blind eye as Israel expanded its illegal settlements and tightened its hold on the autonomous territories. In the process, Mr. Blair helped render the Palestinian Authority more, not less, dependent on Israel. Instead of protecting the Palestinians from the Israeli settlers, Palestinian security forces have since been protecting Israeli settlers from Palestinian resentment.

That’s why it was no coincidence that Mr. Blair attacked the Palestinian leadership’s decision to seek United Nations recognition of the Palestinian state, calling it “deeply confrontational.” The Israelis showered their friend with praise. But the Palestinians, whom the special envoy was meant to serve, accused Mr. Blair of talking like an “Israeli diplomat, selling their policies” — a new variant of an older critique of Mr. Blair as an American diplomat, or “Bush’s poodle,” selling White House policies.

If there was any doubt about where Mr. Blair stands, his recent statements confirm the perception that he’s now the puppy of the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Mr. Blair has argued that the Palestinians’ internal divisions and the constraints on their leadership are of their own making, and have nothing to do with nearly five decades of Israeli occupation.

Mr. Blair also dismisses all links between the rise of radical Islamist groups and foreign interventions, cheering Israel’s role as a key player in the Western campaign against Islamist extremism. This mind-set is precisely the problem. In fact, the recent history of the region shows a direct cause-and-effect relationship between occupation and religious extremism. For example, Israel’s occupation and repression of the Palestinians produced Hamas. Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon produced Hezbollah. Al Qaeda in Afghanistan grew out of the Russian invasion and occupation. Al Qaeda in Iraq was a response to the American invasion.

It isn’t that Mr. Blair is ignorant of the history, but he’s a believer himself — one who is apparently disposed to say anything to defend his own rather fundamentalist positions about the Islamic world. He has been vocal in favor of American and Western military actions in Iraq and Syria, just as he supported the army’s coup d’état in Egypt and defended Gen. Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s crackdown on the opposition.