TONY BLAIR is expected to inspect a prospective new home - known locally as a palace - when he travels to Jerusalem tomorrow on his first trip to the Middle East as a peace envoy.

He is said to be keen to take over the one-time residence of the British High Commissioner for Palestine, with its ballroom and spectacular view of the golden dome of Al-Aqsa mosque.

The house, built of Jerusalem stone in 1931, was once the pride of British diplomacy and occupies a commanding position in West Jerusalem on the inauspiciously named Hill of Evil Counsel, where Judas is said to have negotiated his betrayal of Jesus. It has acres of lush gardens filled with delphiniums, roses and trees. After the British mandate ended in 1948, it was taken over by the United Nations.

Security fears about such a prominent residence might still block the deal as Blair is regarded as a target for Palestinian extremists.

Blair casts himself as EU president candidate

Speaking on French TV, Tony Blair sang the praises of the EU and sketched his agenda for its future, all in fluent French

Multimedia

• The Blair years: video, pictures and analysis

• Interactive Blair Timeline

• BlairTube

BACKGROUND

• The past decade a disaster?

• All about Iraq? Don’t you believe it

• I’ll give Blair six and a half out of ten

Multimedia

• Blair fashion gallery

• Cherie Blair picture gallery

• Brookes on Blair

Blair will travel to Jerusalem as envoy of the Quartet, the grouping of the UN, the European Union, America and Russia, charged with implementing the “road map”, a blueprint for peace through confidence-build-ing measures intended to lead to a peace agreement between the Palestinians and Israelis.

Blair’s room for manoeuvre will be limited. His job is solely to help the Palestinians to restart their economy and rebuild their infrastructure and state.

His predecessor, James Wolfensohn, told an Israeli paper last week: “The mandate he has been given . . . is exactly the same as mine. It speaks about helping the Palestinians but there is nothing there about negotiating peace.”

This is likely to produce tensions. Blair has shown signs of wanting to play a wider role, similar to his part in the Northern Ireland peace process. “I hope I can offer something in bringing about a solution to this issue that is of such fundamental importance to the world,” he said in Lisbon last week.

Israeli security services are taking extraordinary measures to protect him amid fears that he could be attacked by militants angry over Britain’s role in the occupation of Iraq. In the past few days Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service, has arrested about 20 extremists described as “rogue Islamist elements”.

Publicly, Arab anger runs high. “It’s like a criminal returning to the scene of his crime,” said Abdel Bari Atwan, editor of the London-based newspaper al-Quds al-Arabi. “He should be pelted with rotten eggs and tomatoes, because he destroyed us, as Arabs and Muslims.”

Rami Khouri, a leading Arab journalist, wrote: “Making Blair envoy to the Middle East is like appointing Nero fire chief in Rome.”

Privately, Palestinian officials hope that his status as a world leader and his closeness to President George W Bush could at least pump some energy into the peace process. The murderous feud between Fatah, the main-stream party of Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, and Hamas, the Islamic fundamentalist party that seized control of Gaza last month, makes Blair’s task even harder.

Western diplomats said that the personal charm and tenacity that helped Blair win a Northern Ireland peace agreement should not be underestimated.

Palestinian officials said they would suggest to Blair that any agreement should be within the framework of the 2002 Arab League initiative, which called for a comprehensive peace in return for Israel’s withdrawal from the territories conquered in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

Times Recommends

• Please help: maimed children of war want their lives back
• Cabal seizes diamond riches to buy power
• White House gatecrashers got to the president