Robert Malley, a key diplomat in the Clinton administration, talks Oct. 7, ending the war in Gaza and the collapse of the two-state solution.

The president has declared attacks on this Middle Eastern country a threat to the security of the United States.

When Tony Blair was first tasked with forging a lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians in 2007, the White House cautioned that the former British prime minister was not "superman" and "he doesn't have a cape".

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has returned to the forefront of Middle East peace efforts with a U.S. proposal that he take a leading role in overseeing Gaza’s administration and reconstruction.

Beckett told Al Jazeera that “most fatally of all, the difficulty was that when he went to meetings in the Middle East, nobody knew which Tony Blair they were seeing—whether it was Tony Blair the Quartet envoy or Tony Blair the patron of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation or Tony Blair the principle of the consultancy firm Tony Blair Associates.”

"It looks like there is a really good chance for peace in the Middle East," the president told NBC News ahead of Monday's meeting. The U.S. plan proposes Hamas release all of the hostages within 48 hours in exchange for a phased withdrawal of Israeli troops,