Later this month Tony Blair will begin his new role after Downing Street. He is expected to travel to Jerusalem as international envoy to the Middle East to help revive the peace process between Israelis and Palestinians.

Blair will arrive in Jerusalem as the representative of the Quartet, an international group composed of the United States, the United Nations, the European Union and Russia. His job will be to rebuild Palestinian institutions as a precursor to any peace deal.

British sources said Blair was expected in Jerusalem for a “recce” visit this month that would involve him seeing Palestinian and Israeli contacts.

When he begins the task in earnest in the autumn, Blair, according to sources in Jerusalem, is most likely to be based, at the Quartet’s expense, in a hotel – probably the American Colony, a beautiful, originally Ottoman building with a courtyard that has a lemon and orange tree.

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Blair follows in the footsteps of James Wolfensohn, who was so ardent in his pursuit of a settlement between the Israelis and Palestinians that when the Israelis withdrew from Gaza he put some of his own millions into buying greenhouses in Gaza – left behind by Israeli farmers in the Israeli withdrawal – for Palestinians to have a start at creating an import-export economy.

The Israelis opened and closed the borders without notice; the ventures failed. Wolfensohn gave up a year ago and wrote off his investments. Blair is expected to take up where he left off. He will have Special Branch protection as a former prime minister, but nowhere near the level of Wolfensohn – the Americans spent $11m on securing him. Blair will also not have the restrictions of Wolfensohn. Whenever the previous envoy wanted to travel to Gaza, he had to ask Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, for permission.

It is a double-edged sword. To do his job, he will have to work with the Palestinian finance ministry and foreign ministry – and they are both in Gaza, which has been taken over by Hamas, the Islamic fundamentalists. Sources in Israel said he would also have Quartet security, and armoured cars were being flown out in advance of his arrival.

Taking on the job, which will earn him £100,000 a year, is a high-stakes gamble. In the Arab world there is scepticism that he is the right person because of his role in supporting the American-led invasion of Iraq and his decision not to denounce Israel’s bombardment of Lebanon last year.

“We will wait and see and we wish him all the best.

But when [Blair] was prime minister, he did nothing for the Palestinian cause,” said Saeb Erekat, a former Palestinian minister. “What can he do now as an envoy?”

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