The motivation is not a mystery: the sands have shifted. The outcome of the war in Lebanon has transformed Israel from a front-line ally into a burden. The US mid-term elections results means that Europe needs to reassess their relationship with the US and Bush. Europe needs a negotiating piece to extract themselves from the debacle in the Muslim Arab world (Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Turkey). Israel is the chess piece they can sacrifice to buy time. I sincerely doubt that Blair’s recent interview, the vote in the UN, and other shoes about to drop are unrelated.