During my just-concluded vacation, my wife and I visited a small Sicilian town called Monreale - a contraction of monte reale or "royal mountain" - about seven kilometres from Palermo, the capital, which is world-renowned for its cathedral, "a dazzling mixture of Arab, Byzantine and Norman artistic styles framed by traditional Romanesque architecture, all combined in a perfect blend of the best that both the Christian and Muslim worlds of the 12th century had to offer".
What was peculiar about the church, which was built during the reign of King William II, who had Muslim ministers, astrologers and doctors in his court and who spoke and read Arabic, was the lower half of its interior Arabesque walls had alternating columns decorated by eight-pointed stars, "Muslim" stars, or six-pointed stars, which are nowadays called Stars of David and are nowadays identified with Israel.
The tourist guide explained Muslim and Jewish artisans were involved in decorating the church nine centuries ago.
This made me wonder whether the Middle East could once again sees new times where all its inhabitants engage in collaborative work.
The Mediterranean cruise we were on coincided with the bloody and disastrous internecine conflict between Hamas and Fatah in the Gaza Strip which left the former in control of the overpopulated, impoverished and isolated Gaza Strip - a prison, and the latter running the Israeli-occupied West Bank, all much to the satisfaction of Israel, the Bush administration and some European nations.
This calamitous turnaround is the result of the shortsightedness of these powers for refusing to accommodate the democratic decision of the Palestinian people in electing Hamas to run their government and the apparent willingness of the weakened Fatah secularists in helping to isolate Hamas.
And now we are faced with the apparent appointment of Tony Blair as a special Middle East envoy whose job description has apparently been the subject of a hot debate among the Quartet envoys who were meeting in Occupied Jerusalem early this week.
The consensus at the time of writing is that the focus of the former British prime minister will be not political but rather on helping the Palestinian National Authority in building political institutions and governance, economic development and security issues in the West Bank, much like what the former envoy, James Wolfensohn, a former World Bank president, did until he reportedly resigned in frustration because of disruptive Israeli and US policies towards the Palestinians.
Blair's interest in his Mideast assignment was clearly spelled out this week when he received California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger at 10 Downing Street.
"I think that anybody who cares about greater peace and stability in the world knows that a lasting and enduring resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian issue is essential," he said. "And I will do whatever I can to help such a resolution come about."
There is fear, however, that the Blair appointment, if it comes, would not have a better fate than earlier unpopular Bush administration choices. There is of course the recent case of Paul Wolfowitz, the arch neoconservative who had a major role in planning the Iraq invasion.
He was compelled to resign his World Bank presidency because of his scandalous conduct in promoting his girlfriend at the bank. And then there was the rejection of another unpopular diplomat, John Bolton, from serving a second term as the US ambassador to the UN.
In fact, Blair is seen as carrying lots of baggage acting, according to the British media, as a poodle for the American president be it his unqualified support of the war in Iraq or his disastrous policies in the Middle East to escape the charge of one-sidedness.
Moreover his refusal to condemn Israel's bombardment of Lebanon in 2006 or call for an immediate ceasefire are additional low points that hurt his image.
On the other hand, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict has been neglected far too long in the West, particularly by the Bush administration, which has failed to follow in the footsteps of its predecessors and appoint a special Mideast peace envoy.
So, there is a room for a more serious appointment and gestures unlike the token offer Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert offered the beleaguered Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in releasing 250 Palestinian prisoners while there are thousands others in Israeli jails.
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