Tony Blair came within moments of being killed when two Israeli fighter aircraft threatened to shoot down a private jet taking him to a Middle East conference in the belief that it might have been staging a terrorist attack.

The warplanes were scrambled to intercept after the jet pilot failed to contact air traffic control. Mr Blair, the international community’s envoy to the Middle East, was flying from the World Economic Forum (WEF) summit in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh to attend a major conference on private investment in the Palestinian city of Bethlehem.

The Israeli aircraft used to intercept Mr Blair’s plane would have been versions of the F16 or F15, armed with Shafrir and Python air-to-air missiles. Both missiles have proved to be devastatingly effective and versatile. The Shafrir 2 missile shot down nearly 100 aircraft in the 1973 Arab-Israeli war.

Air traffic controllers spotted a suspicious aircraft heading into Israeli airspace from the Sinai peninsula on Monday and made several attempts to establish contact. When the pilot failed to respond to their urgent requests, the Israelis scrambled two fighters to intercept what they feared could have been a terrorist attacker.

The fighters flew above Mr Blair’s civilian aircraft to indicate to the pilot that he was considered a suspect target, at which point he finally made contact. The pilot told them that he was carrying Mr Blair.

During the entire incident, Mr Blair — flying with other delegates from the WEF, who were also attending the Bethlehem conference — was not informed of the situation by the pilot.

“They were unaware of it while they were on the plane,” Ruti Winterstein, spokeswoman for Mr Blair’s office in Israel, said. “They didn’t hear about it until afterwards, from the media.”

An Israeli army spokeswoman said the military would not comment on the incident, but another security source said the manoeuvre was standard procedure in such circumstances.

Israeli forces have been on high alert for threats from the Sinai region since Hamas knocked down a wall on the Egyptian border five months ago and had free access in and out of the besieged Gaza Strip for a week. It is also an area where terrorists linked to al-Qaeda have carried out bomb attacks on hotels in recent years.

Initial investigations into the events indicated a technical malfunction was to blame for the breakdown in communication, the Israeli newspaper Maariv said, adding that new systems had been set up in recent months to identify suspicious aircraft. Israeli fighters have been scrambled on several occasions to intercept potential attackers.

The conference in Bethlehem aimed to attract up to £1 billion in capital to jump-start the Palestinian economy, the main focus of Mr Blair’s mission in the region. More than 2,000 delegates and would-be investors attended the conference, which many welcomed as a positive first step towards creating a viable Palestinian state.

But as the West Bank looked hopefully towards renewed economic growth, Gaza, which is run by Hamas and which has in effect been under an Israeli blockade for almost a year, was again stricken by bloodshed.

A Palestinian suicide bomber blew himself up in a lorry packed with four tonnes of explosives near an Israeli crossing point, but failed to kill anyone except himself.

The explosion was claimed by the fanatical group Islamic Jihad and the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades.

Hours later, at another crossing point, Israeli soldiers opened fire on a crowd of Hamas demonstrators who were protesting at the prolonged closure of the borders. One person was killed and ten wounded. An Israeli army spokesman said the soldiers had fired on armed men in the crowd.

Mr Blair, meanwhile, was heading back to London on a scheduled flight, his office said.

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