GAZA, Oct. 17 (UPI) — The prospect of the impoverished Palestinian Authority finally being able to develop a natural gas field 20 miles off the Gaza Strip’s Mediterranean coast, 13 years after it was discovered, is looking increasingly good amid U.S.-led efforts to bolster the Palestinian economy. “For the first time in over a decade, there’s a serious prospect Gaza gas will actually happen,” former British Prime Minister Tony Blair , divulged this week. “The Palestinian side is resolved; the Israeli side will take a little longer,” he told the Financial Times in Jerusalem. Although the project seems much closer to fruition than it’s ever been, previous plans to encourage peace efforts in the Middle East have crashed in flames because of the abiding hostility between the two sides and the continuing 46-year Israeli occupation of the West Bank. Blair is the Jerusalem-based representative of the Middle East Quartet, […]