LONDON (Dispatches) – A British peer whose cousin was taken captive in the Hamas-led October 7 operation on southern parts of the Israeli-occupied territories has said there is no hope for peace with Netanyahu as the regime’s prime minister.
Lord Michael Levy, a Labour peer who was prime minister Tony Blair’s West Asia advisor and envoy from 1997 to 2007, said in an interview with the Independent that West Asia is in a “potential blow-up situation”. 
If Netanyahu had been offered a pardon and retired from Israeli politics, he said, “we could have a very different scene in Israel, there may be some hope forward for a peaceful solution”.
“I don’t think there’s any hope for peace with Netanyahu in power,” the peer said during the interview.
Levy, who had a home in Tel Aviv, raised millions of pounds for the Labour Party before Blair became prime minister, and was then appointed Blair’s personal envoy to West Asia in 2000.
He has often drawn controversy, famously walking out of a meeting with Zionist prime minister Ariel Sharon in 2003, which many believed led to the envoy being sidelined.
Levy also brokered talks between Palestinian Liberation Organization chairman Yasser Arafat and the Zionist regime and was credited with having convinced Arafat, whom he described as “very personable” but “difficult to read”, to appoint a Palestinian prime minister. 
“We must also not look the other way as civilians bear the ongoing dire consequences of this conflict in the Middle East,” he added, further calling for ceasefires in Gaza and Lebanon.