Israeli Jets Threaten to Shoot Down Tony Blair's Plane

Two Israeli fighter aircraft threatened to shoot down a private jet transporting Tony Blair after coming under the misapprehension that the aircraft was staging a potential terrorist attack.

Blair, who has served for 11 months as the Middle East "quartet" envoy, was en route to Israel from a World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting at Sharm el Sheikh, in Egypt, on Wednesday morning when the warplanes were scrambled to intercept the jet, according to a report in the Times.

It is understood air traffic controllers noticed what they thought was a suspicious aircraft heading into Israeli airspace from the Sinai peninsula and tried to make contact.

Receiving no response, Israel sent out two fighters which flew above the civilian aircraft to indicate to the pilot he was being considered a suspect target.

It was only after the warplanes were positioned in attack mode that the aircraft's crew made contact, informing air traffic control that Blair was on the flight.

According to the report in the Times, the former prime minister was unaware of the situation.

"They were unaware of it while they were on the plane," Ruti Winterstein, a spokeswoman for Mr Blair's office in Israel, told the paper. "They didn't hear about it until afterwards, from the media."

Blair was travelling with other delegates from the WEF, who were among 2,000 people heading for the Palestinian city of Bethlehem to attend a major conference on private investment which was hoping to attract up to £1bn for the Palestinian economy.

The Israeli newspaper Maariv reported that initial investigations suggested the communication breakdown was the result of a technical malfunction.

New systems have apparently been set up in the past few months to identify suspicious aircraft and Israeli forces have been on heightened alert for threats after Hamas knocked down a wall on the Egyptian border five months ago.